When the finance board of your agency is ejected from its own meeting by a bevy of spandex-clad superheroes, it’s safe to say this year’s budget negotiations have gotten a little more intense than usual.

The battle royale over the MBTA’s proposed cuts is not quite over, with the final proposal set to be put to a vote this week. But for now it looks like a patchwork compromise that hikes fares more than 20 percent but still maintains almost all current services will be enough to get the T through another year.

But as the dust settles – and protesters and bureaucrats alike go home to lay a steak over their eyes – the most important question remaining may not be who won the day, but rather what residential developers in the audience made of it all.

Long-Term Thinking 

For years, housing advocates have insisted that “transit-oriented development” and “smart growth” are not only the wave of the future, but the key to overcoming the usual obstacles that stymie new construction. By concentrating housing and commercial development along existing transit lines, traffic-hating suburbs can be coaxed into allowing greater density, older industrial cities can be revitalized and environmental impacts can be mitigated. And the concepts have the added bonus of better serving the desires of retiring boomers and young Millenials, both of whom like the idea of living someplace where they don’t need a car.

“The idea of depending a lot on transit to provide access to your project is relatively new,” said Stephanie Pollack, a scholar of urban and regional policy at Northeastern University in Boston. “The MBTA has been around for 100 years, and I think people just sort of assume it will be there.”

Already, new T stops represent the lynchpins of development plans in cities like Somerville, with approval of a new stop on the Orange Line finally triggering construction on the city’s long-awaited Assembly Square project. In Quincy, downtown revitalization efforts are centered around its downtown T stop.

And it’s not just cities surrounding Boston that have a lot riding on the T – literally and figuratively. In the long term, development plans like the proposed South Coast Rail Line are key, advocates argue, to helping former industrial centers like New Bedford and Fall River find some measure of prosperity again.

But the T’s parlous balance sheets could throw all of these plans into question.

Some of the proposed schemes to get the T back in black include severe service cuts. If that comes to pass, being steps away from the train might not be such an attractive proposition if residents can’t so easily get into inner Boston on nights and weekends, Pollack pointed out.

“I do think that unfortunately, it may give some of the developers pause,” she said.

Still, existing transit infrastructure is a draw, said André Leroux, executive director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance.

“There are many stations where there’s a lot of development potential around the T,” Leroux told Banker & Tradesman. “Maintaining that core system in good repair and with good service is still going to stimulate developers for years to come.”

But even he conceded, “as you get outside of the core system, there’s a challenge. Bedroom communities commuting into Boston – a lot of the Gateway Cities, a lot of their revitalization [centers] around having access to commuter rail. I think [service cuts] may have a chilling effect. In the long term, the market will be there – but in the short term, added to the recession, it piles on.”

And it’s not just the threat of service cuts scaring off developers. The T’s current dire straits often leads the agency to structure real estate deals so it receives all of its cut upfront to cover its current budget, Pollack said. That kind of short-term thinking can hamstring development in the long-term, with crucial parcels sold off and no consideration given to long-term returns or to coordinating development plans with local CDCs and other groups.

And even as this year’s crisis passes, a lot more may be at stake in next year’s fight over a long-term solution to the T’s troubles – a solution that will demand more than simply discussing the Sunday schedule on the Green Line. If the T cuts to the bone in order to get back to solvency, that could imperil future development all over the region.

“My hope is that the development community will support a legislative solution and help the legislature understand the importance of the T as an anchor for new development and building projects,” Pollack said. “We need to not just fix this year’s budget but to stabilize the system so that developers have the confidence to count on the transit system being there for them.”

“The development community these days is filled with people who are really thinking about and shifting their dollars towards transit [accessible communities]. So many of the suburbs I deal with on a daily basis are trying to redevelop their downtowns around a commuter rail station, maybe put in a bus line. And I think this does make it a little more risky” for developers, said Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. “If I were a developer, I would be thinking ‘okay, it looks like we dodged the bullet this year, but what about next year?’ I think they’re going to be wondering: Is the commonwealth going to come to grips with the overall funding of transportation in Massachusetts, or are they going to kick the can down the road?”