^You may know more about it than me, but my impression is that Selser Schaefer knew what they were doing, but the cost increases of the past few years are just too much to keep up with. This isn't the only project falling due to cost increases and won't be the last. Heck, Gilcrease is only funded through the shell of the building due to continual cost increases.
I don't understand how they were going to fit it all in either, but I assume they sketched the floorplans. Probably tiny hotel rooms and studio apartments?
It's a bad time to be trying to get anything off the ground. I expect the next concept pitched for this corner will not be so flashy.
Gilcrease is an outlier and I frankly think a lot of that comes down to how the city bid out the work and they put themselves in a corner with contractors who are gauging the city now. Someone is pocketing excess millions on the construction/contractor side on that project.
There have been cost increases the primarily driven by interest rates. Makes the construction debt a lot more expensive and reduces your returns on the perm debt side too. However, rate increases don't justify doubling of the construction costs. Material prices have stabilized and some have actually came down but labor costs and things like that are still stressed. 10-25% would seem in the realm of reasonable but 75-100% increase is not.
That means either the contractor who gave Sharp the cost estimate either royally screwed up on the original budget or Selser Schaefer sold Sharp a bunch of BS in the renderings claiming for what budget they wanted to spend that those renderings were realistic. They weren't. You can tell that simply by the scale of the renderings the conceptual idea was completely unrealistic. How no one questioned this I don't get it. Selser Schaefer did this on the Jenks Main Street RFP too with a bunch of fancy renderings of a building, streetscape, etc. that was completely unrealistic to build for the construction budget that went along with it. Helped them win that RFP for that developer too and that project is going to see major reworking to make it financially work as I've heard the developer is really struggling to make that happen. I do have a big issue with architects who sell renderings and things like that on public projects that are very misleading. It's a pattern with them for sure including Santa Fe Square and they've used those renderings to get tax incentives, etc. and then look what Santa Fe's office building looks like now? At some point I hope people catch on to what they do with projects so we can stop awarding RFPs to developers who don't submit more realistic expectations/ideas for sites. The selection committee should have to answer more detailed questions about this too but no one is ever held accountable for terrible decision making on things like this in Tulsa. Hopefully the other finalist is given a chance to see if they can make their project work.