The title of this post should be, who is the smartest builder.  That award once again goes to XXX Homes (XXXH).  They've earned this by constantly being the builder that evades costly city requirements the most successfully.  No other builder has the ability to do what XXXH does, and that is find work arounds to the most absurd and costly city requirement, the storm water restrictions contained in the DSSP.

One of the most admirable qualities of the XXXH approach is to gain a huge competitive advantage by avoiding expenses that have no benefit to its customers.  How exactly they do this remains somewhat of a mystery.   The plan prepared by XXXH's contractor is one that would not be approvable by any other builder (such as me). It offers massive cost savings.  I'd estimate that XXXH is currently saving around $30k, and as much as $75k vs other (less smart) builders (like me, I guess I am currently in the dumb builder category).  

Looking at the XXXH approach, which I have done, involved having my own consultant pull the XXXH file at city hall and research it for hidden loopholes in city policy that we could also exploit.  Unfortunately we didn't find any contained in that plan that could not be explained by extremely generous and overly favourable interpretation of the rules (yes some even bordering on totally egregious misinterpretation).  Yet when the time comes to submit a plan, no other builder will get the same latitude from the city. Very puzzling.  

Here is a current open excavation at the XXXH site. They have simply connected pipe, later to attach to the downspout, to a single catch basis that is recessed in the front yard, that also acts as a overflow pond in the event the flow restrictor at the outlet backs up during a high flow event.  The puzzling feature of this design, which is not explainable, is how the entire garage roof water can flow 100 ft to the catch basin (over or under poured patios?).  I, along with other sane observers, would say it is impossible for this to occur.  This is the genius in the XXXH approach.  While its plan is not viable, it is cheap, and saves a lot of money.  The implications of this economization is far reaching and even goes as far as permissible square footage and transaction price advantage for each saleable unit.