Andrew Kerr- Architect - Here's why the new White House ballroom project is not real.

[FBaggins]

61. Yes and no

I'll often see an attorney's opinion cited in a debate here on some constitutional issue only to find that they specialize in family law or real estate law. Those are perfectly respectable professions, but the writer may have only taken a single semester of con law two or three decades ago. I often find that student I coach for moot court have a superior understanding of the issues involved than the person being cited as authoritative... despite lacking a law degree (or even an undergraduate degree at that point).

Kerr is the COO of an architecture firm that appears only to do home construction and home improvement projects. His graduate degrees are in business and operations management. That's entirely appropriate for his position, but the people in the firm actively doing architechture work have their advanced degrees in architecture... and even then I would take with a grain of salt their opinions on federal building cost estimates.

The more recent illustrations posted here are from McCrery Architects. McCrery is a professor of architecture at CU in DC who specializes in classic architecture and has worked on the US Capitol, the Capitol here in NC, and the Supreme Court.

Kerr is drawing conclusions on far too little data. He's already taken down the original images when he realized that they were discredited. He "stands by" his analysis... but it's demonstrably outside of his area of expertise.

As a simple example - consider his statement "the cost per square foot would be $3,333. No building costs anywhere near that. $1,000/sf is astronomical." Then consider the recent debate over renovations for the Federal Reserve HQ building that are currently underway. Trump was lambasting Powell over how wasteful the spending was and most of us here took the opposite position. Well... that's a $2.5 Billion dollar project... which renovates 402k sqft and expands an additional 440k sqft. That's $3k/sqft and half of it is renovation... not demolition and new construction.