We can tell you in five letters why it makes no sense for the owner of the Platypus Pub lot in Bend to turn it into mixed-use apartments: M-O-N-E-Y.

Jake Ertle says it would cost him some $20 million to tear down the building and construct a mixed-use apartment building on the Third Street site. Instead, he wants to spend a total of maybe $3 million to turn it into two drive-thrus.

He doesn’t believe the apartments would pencil out with the rent he could charge. Building the drive-thrus would save him a pile of money. The city should not block his plans because it doesn’t fit what it had hoped for the area.

Ertle’s plans have some people dismayed. Some who live or work near the site have protested. They want to see the city’s vision of the area come true. City planners have hatched a vision of mixed-use development. They hope for a pedestrian-friendly zone with businesses and housing and few, if any, cars and bikes and transit, and surely dogs and cats all living together in a planner nirvana.

It is a wonderful vision. And driving a stake through drive-thrus makes the wish list of many who love to tell people how to get around and how and what to eat.

But it would be boneheaded not to realize that the kind of development they want won’t happen if it’s not going to be profitable.

Is somebody going to hand Ertle a check for the millions in difference in cost between what some people want and what Ertle thinks is feasible? Does the city have a hefty incentive package to cut his costs to make a building of mixed-use apartments profitable? Will members of the community sign long-term leases at rents high enough to make the apartments pencil out? Nope. Nope. Nope.

If the city or members of the community want to dictate what should be built on the site of the Platypus Pub, they should offer to buy it.