Live-Work-Play Developments seem to be slowing down

Sounds miserable

GD, you are racist

:rasiss:

You can sell people on just about anything. Live-Work-Play developments sounds awful. People can create that on their own.

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The apartments get built, entire first floor remains vacant retail space because the rent is too high for any tenants except the leasing office and the apartment gym, the "Coming Soon" sign for the office building is 2 years out of date with peeling paint.

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Then they set the rent too high.

I would draw a distinction between "communities" like River Ranch in Lafayette, Rouzan in Baton Rouge, etc, etc, and simple mixed use developments (retail/commercial on the bottom floor, residential and office space on higher floors). I think the jury is still out on the former, but the latter is the norm throughout the world, in the United States included, anywhere in which density is "high" or greater. Hell, in medium density cities with higher density areas (usually downtown), it's extremely common. I can't fathom anyone claiming with a straight face that paradigm doesn't work.

ETA: I apparently didn't make it down to your last paragraph. Yes, there are absolutely unscrupulous developers who use it as a ploy, but that's hardly an indictment of the concept as a whole

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Live-Work-Play Developments seem to be slowing down

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Because with the advent of remote work and otherwise innovations like Starlink, you can live-work-play from anywhere, not just some overpriced condo with bad demographics.

Hell if Starlink can stabilize their connection speed, I might live/work/play in rural Wyoming.

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Then they set the rent too high.

I would draw a distinction between "communities" like River Ranch in Lafayette, Rouzan in Baton Rouge, etc, etc, and simple mixed use developments (retail/commercial on the bottom floor, residential and office space on higher floors). I think the jury is still out on the former, but the latter is the norm throughout the world, in the United States included, anywhere in which density is "high" or greater. Hell, in medium density cities with higher density areas (usually downtown), it's extremely common. I can't fathom anyone claiming with a straight face that paradigm doesn't work.

ETA: I apparently didn't make it down to your last paragraph. Yes, there are absolutely unscrupulous developers who use it as a ploy, but that's hardly an indictment of the concept as a whole

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Agreed. I work in development and this is what we see constantly, specifically in a single family residential area where a developer wants to build apartments. The city knows they will catch hell from neighboring residents who do not want an apartment complex going up next to them, so they aren't going to approve the plan. The developer sells it as "mixed-use" with retail/commercial on the first floor, 3 or 4 levels of apartments above. They run the numbers and know they can make the deal work by filling the apartments, even if the ground level stays completely empty.

The areas I'm talking about are usually very suburban, car-dependent but existing neighbors and new renters love the idea of being able to walk to a coffee shop, bar or restaurant, maybe a quaint book store or bakery, like in those holiday Hallmark movies... But there usually isn't enough customer traffic from just the neighbors to support those businesses and there is almost never enough parking to accommodate the renters, let alone anyone else driving in to those businesses.