From The Real Deal: developer Elghanayan says "you must have a super-optimistic view of life" to be a developer (or, as AY suggests, an unfounded one)

From The Real Deal's 20th Anniversary issue, excerpts from "The Closing" interviews:

Henry Elghanayan

Rockrose Development (2013) 

Do you need to have a certain amount of ego to be a successful developer in New York City?

You must not only have an ego, you must have a super-optimistic view of life. I have an unnaturally optimistic view on life — it’s a sickness. If you understood the real dangers involved in doing a project, you would never do one.

That echoes a 2016 valedictory quote from Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner, who told Crain's New York Business, in the publication's paraphrase, "If he knew the true economics [of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park] at the outset, he said, he would probably have passed."

But he surely knew some of them.

And with what might be called an "unnaturally optimistic view" or perhaps a "completely unfounded view," Ratner claimed, in a May 2008 New York Daily News op-ed, "We anticipate finishing all of Atlantic Yards by 2018."

The word "anticipate," I observed at the time, was a "weasel word," since Ratner surely knew it was unlikely. 

And we know how that turned out.

That, of course, raises the question: when it's a public-private partnership (or, as I've argued, a "private-public partnership"), with significant government help and subsidies, direct and indirect, shouldn't the public get clear-eyed views of a project's prospects? 

And if we can't get that from the "super-optimistic" developers, shouldn't we get them from public agencies.