I attended the Rose Café this past Wednesday with Noah Demarest giving a presentation on his current projects and as well as providing some insight on the development of Ithaca over the past few years, and future changes that residents of the city should expect to see soon. His projects ranged from apartment buildings to the Cornell tennis facilities. One of the things I found more interesting about the presentation was how much time it takes to begin construction on a project. So many things need to be considered by the firm, first the client’s needs, such as the amount of livable square footage, outdoor features, the general architecture of the building, and many more details. This process alone can take months just to sort out all the details of what is expected by the clients. After this initial process is done they must take it to the city to see what can and cannot be done, then they must cycle back to client to change things and this process can go on for a while, months up to years in some cases. Noah talked about some of the more nuanced details of developing a property that can affect the value, such as putting the bottom floor of a building too low. A few inches vertically can be the difference of a floor being able to have tenants and being able to charge rent and leaving the space for only utilities. This and many other things must all be balanced to satisfy the client and the city. Overall the presentation by Noah was very informative, and provided valuable insight in the small-scale development in the city of Ithaca.