I generally prefer local, because they are the people who have the most invested in the community. If someone comes here with the idea of making a quick buck, I am not sure the result with be great whether their eyes are fresh or not.
They also may not understand or care about local nuance. I could tell Lamb was not hitting the right mark from the beginning when he took the name of another existing building. He might be brilliant in TO, but I don't think he understands here.
On the other hand, if we don't open the city up to developers from other major centres, we'll probably be forever stuck in the extremely risk-averse circle of well established local developers, which tends to lower quality and slow the movement of new developments, as competition is lower and well known.
Not to say that all developers from outside are good (or that all locals are bad), but there's the need to shake things up in this industry, here.
Also, it is clear to me that Lamb indeed failed on their research efforts and made a very misconstructed proposal, but failure is a great teacher and they'll probably learn from it