https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-05-23/uvm-halt...
Consider a 2 acre project:
$3MM in land costs inside Burlington
$300,000 in land costs right outside Burlington
What projects would could you do on the $300,000 lot that you can't possible do on the $3MM? Basically all of them!
Regarding the UVM project: they should sell that parking lot to bring the $1.5MM/ac costs closer to $300k/ac so people can build stuff instead of a place to store asphalt :)
regardless, why do you think land in burlington is expensive?
I suppose the delta is surprising to you?
It's expensive because it's productive. The marginal productivity of living/working in Burlington means the market can sustain higher costs, ergo the costs go up.
This is more problematic than every other good because 1) they cannot add more land inside Burlington and 2) the land doesn’t actually have higher carrying costs by virtue of being more expensive (unlike roughly every other asset).
