Unfortunately, only the developer gets to decide how strapped for cash they are or aren't. The NYT reports that the council member had quite a few other demands, not just adding a couple 2- and 3-beds. Do you have a link to where she says she dropped all her other demands regarding this project except for this one?

Given that these are the developers we have, instead of some imaginary other cohort of developers, if you only want apartments that fit your particular specifications, then you do not really want apartments. We need housing so badly, and so fast, that any unit not built is basically a moral crime.

The individuals and young couples who would have taken those apartments have to live somewhere, and now they will move into legacy housing instead. So killing this project guarantees more ongoing displacement. ETA: It's also not just the lack of compromise, it's also that these delays and additional reviews themselves cost the developer money that they would have spent on building the project, so the more it drags out, the more they bleed money, and the more they are likely to give up. It's not simply that they have a bad attitude, though of course they may also have a bad attitude!

At least he finally went on Brian Lehrer recently and took calls from New Yorkers. De Blasio was terrible, but he was on there all the time, hearing from people and getting yelled at live on the air. And generally he was more accessible. Before then, what did Adams do? He went on Ezra Klein (New York Times) and then later published an op-ed in The Economist (hard paywall, clearly not intended for ordinary citizens/voters). I think Adams is arrogant. He thinks he's too good for media scrutiny, or even to hear from ordinary New Yorkers.

This is why enforcement isn't the most effective thing we can do to save more lives. Assholes are pretty evenly distributed in populations around the world, but many of our peer countries have used a combination of design and regulation to bring car crash deaths way down. To be clear, assholes who break the law and hurt or kill people need to pay. But if the goal is saving lives, of the several things that need to be done toward that goal, enforcement isn't the biggest or most effective piece.