Just what is it about Boston that keeps attracting wealthy travel company chiefs and parking lot moguls with dreams of building the city’s next mega project, all of whom have about as much development experience as my Lego-obsessed 11-year-old?

The Hub needs another amateur developer with skyscraper fever bumbling about downtown and wasting everyone’s time like it needs another six inches of snow.

But that’s just what Boston may get, as travel company chief Steve Belkin, the man behind the half-baked thousand-foot tower plan, back at it with a new proposal.

And Belkin is hardly alone. Jon Rosenthal, an anti-gun activist and small-time housing developer with no major project experience, has flailed away for years now on a proposal to build a $550-million mixed-use project over the Turnpike next to Fenway Park.

Another travel company mogul, Alan Lewis, gets an honorable mention, though his Theater District tower, after years of sitting on the drawing boards, finally got built with a big assist from one of the Boston area’s top development firms.

And, of course, before Belkin and Rosenthal, there was Frank McCourt. The parking lot king spent years spinning grandiose plans for his South Boston lots before moving on to wreck the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Tommy’s Tower Revisited

Founder of travel firm Trans National Group, Belkin’s first crack at becoming a big-time Boston developer was hardly inspiring. Belkin spent years pushing plans for a thousand-foot tower on Federal Street, a proposal that called for a 75-story skyscraper where a modest office building and a city parking garage now stands.

The late Mayor Tom Menino took to the idea, championing it so aggressively that it was dubbed “Tommy’s Tower.”

But to real developers – ones who actually build downtown towers – the project was a complete joke, the object of private mirth at a time when speaking common sense publicly would land you in the doghouse at City Hall. Only someone with no development experience would have proposed a $1-billion-plus tower with more than 1 million square feet of office space at a time when the Financial District was sporting double-digit vacancy rates.

If the project had ever gotten off the ground, it would have hoovered up corporate tenants from across the district, helping undermine nearby tower owners already struggling to fill empty space. It was a proposal of pure fantasy, complete with plans for a full-scale public park in the clouds atop the tower’s roof.

Now Belkin is back, having lowered his sights for his proposed Financial District tower to an oh-so-modest 740 feet, just a shade below the Hancock and Prudential  towers. The basic development play is the same as before – Belkin wants to combine his Federal Street midrise with an adjacent city parking garage to create a building pad for his proposed tower.

For whatever reason, the Boston Redevelopment Authority apparently feels compelled to talk seriously with Belkin about his latest tower scheme, which – pegged at $900 million – he surely won’t be financing on his own. The travel business may be good, but not that good.

The only good news is that City Hall’s development arm is now seeking other proposals for the garage.

Fenway Follies

Across town, next to Fenway Park, you can find another prime example of a would-be mega developer in over this head. Rosenthal, a housing developer and anti-gun activist with no big project experience, has spent years trying and failing to get his $550-million Fenway Center air-rights project off the drawing boards.

You might not meet a nicer guy than Rosenthal, who may be best known for the compelling billboard with anti-gun violence messages that adorns the side of his Lansdowne Street parking garage alongside the Pike. But Rosenthal, who has built smaller-scale affordable housing projects, has never built anything near the size and complexity of his proposed Fenway Center, which has been kicking around now in various iterations for well more than a decade.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s decision last spring to grant the long-stalled project a multi-million-dollar break raised hopes, but a year, later still nothing.

It’s put up or shut up time for Rosenthal, with the developer reportedly now exploring a deal with a West Coast firm with big project experience.

If so, that would take a page from travel company owner Alan Lewis’ playbook. Lewis pushed hard to get city approval for his Kensington tower, smack in the city’s Theater District, and despite protests from historic preservationists, he won City Hall’s permission in 2003 to tear down the historic Gaiety Theater taken by eminent domain.

It was a lot of hurry for nothing, though. The building site on Washington Street sat empty for nearly a decade, a big hole in the ground where the Gaiety once stood, until a deal with National Development finally got the tower moving.

Real Costs

And it would all be an amusing sideshow, but for the fact that these wealthy big-shots tie up valuable sites while also sucking valuable time and attention from Boston’s overstretched city planners.

Belkin can’t be completely ignored – after all, he owns the office building next to the decrepit parking garage city officials have been hoping to redevelop for years. Obviously, combining Belkin’s site with the city garage makes for a better building pad. But the Walsh Administration can still cash in on the development value of the city’s parking garage, even without Belkin’s building. The garage site alone has more than 47,000 square feet to work with, or just over an acre. That might be enough for an apartment or condo high-rise, if not an office tower.

Still, the prospect of Belkin as a not-so-happy abutter may scare off developers – the city now is just in the preliminary stages of seeking interest. The last time city officials sought proposals for the garage site, Belkin was the only one to respond.

In that case, City Hall would be better off repairing the crumbling Federal Street garage, or even better yet, fix it up and expanding it.

Downtown Boston could surely use more parking. And frankly, anything would be preferable to wasting more years stroking the ego of yet another amateur developer, all at the public’s expense.

Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com