Mayor Thomas M. Menino has all but appointed himself as the Hub’s master builder, a job that increasingly looks like it comes with a lifetime tenure.

Now, with the first mayoral race in years taking shape, maybe it is time to look more closely at the track record of the city’s developer-in chief.

More than any other Boston mayor, Menino has immersed himself in the minutiae of city development, setting himself as the final arbiter of whether projects live or die from his throne on the fifth floor of City Hall.

And frankly, the results, for all that effort, have been seriously lacking at times.

The mayor’s now nearly 16-year reign has had its share – and then some – of development misfires, from the near catastrophe of plans, now mercifully forgotten, to tear down Fenway Park and a good chunk of the neighborhood around it, to the ill-conceived proposal to build a 1,000-foot tower downtown.

But whether we have an honest appraisal of the Menino’s record as master builder is an open question.

The first rule for anyone wanting to build anything in Boston, from a new parking lot to a skyscraper, is don’t do anything at all to anger the mayor.

All of which brings us to a larger problem – beyond goofy proposals and outright flops – the role the mayor has adopted as the city’s virtual development dictator.

The mayor is famously oversensitive, not just to slights or perceived criticism, but to anyone, especially a developer, with a penchant for self promotion in the press.

The developers who fared the best have been the ones that have learned to toe the line, avoiding public attention like the plague and trudging ahead with predictable, but uninspired, proposals.

But that doesn’t exactly create a welcoming environment for new ideas and outside-the-box thinking. And with Boston facing its most severe economic test in decades, more mediocre plans from timid, don’t-rock the-boat builders are the last thing the city needs.

“In the Hub of the universe, the intellectual capital, it is just a way that stifles thought,’’ noted one long-time observer of development in the city, who, fearful for his livelihood, won’t talk on the record. “The city get’s cheated.’’

Let’s start with the mayor’s record.

To give the mayor his due, there certainly have been some successes. The $800 million-plus convention center was widely panned as a bad idea, but Menino stuck behind the idea made it happen.

It has turned out to be a solid base hit, if not a home run. Time will tell.

There has also been explosion in luxury condo construction downtown, creating badly needed new housing, even as it threatens to turn parts of the Back Bay into a playground for the rich.

And let me say it’s hard to think of anyone who works as hard as Menino at his job, in the public or private sector. The guy is on the clock around the clock, as any of his former or current exhausted staffers would likely attest. Say what you like about his leadership approach and thin skin; he’s probably one of the most honest mayors Boston has ever had.

But mostly when I think of Menino’s track record as Boston’s development czar, what comes to mind are lots of big proposals – some dubious, others not – that went nowhere.

There’s Tommy’s Tower, the proposal for a 1,000-foot office tower, which, if anyone was crazy enough to build it, would have hollowed out the Financial District, not to mention plans to sell City Hall and build a new municipal palace on the waterfront, now quietly being scuttled.

But that’s just for starters.

There’s the never ending Fan Pier saga, that long-planned, multibillion-dollar waterfront development which, after more than a quarter century of talk, may finally produce a cookie cutter office building. That is if it can find a tenant now.

And no one will soon forget soon the Columbus Center air-rights fiasco, that $800 million-plus plan for decking over the Turnpike near the South End that recently went belly-up, leaving an abandoned construction site.

And speaking of holes in the ground, don’t forget Kensington Place. City officials pushed through the demolition of the historic Gaiety Theater near Downtown Crossing to make way for that beauty. More than five years later, there’s a big ugly crater, but no tower.

I’m still waiting for the South Station tower, first proposed a decade ago and no sign of it yet. At least they didn’t rip anything down there yet.

But more damaging than this collection of misfires has been the mayor’s habit of taking a dislike to any developer with the brains and moxie to propose a big idea and attempt to build it.

The biggest tragedy in this regard has been John Hynes, one of Boston’s most successful developers. Hynes’ father is newscaster Jack Hynes while his grandfather was one of Boston’s most highly regarded mayors.

Hynes, for his part, is not shy about talking up his plans, combining a promoter’s flair with one of the more creative development minds around.

Backed by Morgan Stanley, Hynes shelled out $200 million in 2006 for Frank McCourt’s collection of parking lots just across the street from Fan Pier on South Boston’s waterfront. And he went to work drawing up a bold, multibillion-dollar development plan, with plans for a manmade hill, homes for thousands of new residents, and an international school.

But far from being pleased, the mayor was doing a slow burn. He took umbrage at the school idea, but that was visible sign of what already had become a deep rift. And in Boston, if the mayor doesn’t like you, your project is going nowhere.

When Hynes last fall fell short on his financing for an equally sweeping plan to redevelop the Filene’s building in Downtown Crossing, the mayor used it as a centerpiece for a short-lived, punitive proposal aimed at developers who run out of cash after starting work.

I guess no one inside City Hall had heard of the global credit crunch yet.

Ironically, McCourt, who sold his parking lots to Hynes’ group, had suffered a similar fate as Hynes. Now owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, McCourt spent years talking up grand schemes for his property, only to draw the contempt of the mayor.

Now Don Chiofaro, the colorful tower builder who is Boston’s answer to Donald Trump, is the latest to find there is room for just one person on the Hub’s development stage.

The mayor’s dislike of Chiofaro, the International Place developer who has proposed a new pair of twin towers near the New England Aquarium, is an open secret in development circles.

Maybe’s it’s the personality, or maybe it’s the tie, who knows.

It does, however, make you wonder on how many development ideas Boston is missing out on, ideas that never make it to the public stage according the mayor’s whims that day.

Here’s where I hoped the mayor would give his two cents, but I will settle for Dot Joyce, the mayor’s press secretary. Of course I am both “mischaracterizing most of these projects’’ and forgetting to mention the mayor holds lots of design competitions in hopes of attracting unique development ideas, she writes. (OK, I take it back, Kensington Place isn’t a hole in the ground, there really is a 30-story condo tower there. I’ll remember to get my glasses checked.)

She also points to two very key decisions the mayor made in South Boston, to ultimately block the Patriots bid to build a football stadium and to ensure the new convention center got built.

“Can you imagine what South Boston would look like with a football stadium or how our economy would be faring without the convention center – for all the bold ideas that didn’t make it there are several more that did,’’ Joyce writes in an e-mail.

Still, this idea of taking personal offense at developers who think big and talk a little too much seems like a pretty odd way of doing business in one of the world’s greatest cities.