Lesson not learned by Schumer, Peyser, Hamill: “Just building office buildings doesn’t mean you’re creating jobs”

From a New York Observer article headlined The Business of Ground Zero:

This, of course, is not how office towers typically get built. Developers, particularly in a recession, traditionally must have a large private tenant in hand to get anything but a laugh from lenders, and speculative office space very rarely flies on such a large scale.

This has sparked concerns that the office towers could be slow to lease up, potentially languishing for years without enough rent to even cover the mortgage payments. “Just building office buildings doesn’t mean you’re creating jobs,” said Barry Gosin, CEO of brokerage Newmark Knight Frank. “It’s not like the field of dreams. We’ve learned that lesson before.”

(Emphasis added)

Who never got that message? Among others, Sen. Chuck Schumer and columnists Andrea Peyser and Denis Hamill, all of whom concluded that Forest City Ratner's announced plan to build office towers meant 10,000 jobs.