Rapidrob, "but with no short term liquidity."?
So which has short term liquidity?
Ferrochrome with a limited market ( Several million tons per year market) or nickel with for practical purposes an unlimited market.
If you are hoping for a rescue from the US market than you're hope is really on thin
ice. That economy is not likely to recover for at least two years and several is
probably closer to reality. It is one of the most damaged and slowest to recover of the global sectors. Should the global economy pick up, not that it needs to for nickel, it is nickel that is more liquid and should Noront build a mine, there would be no problem in puting it out on the market in any quantity without seriously affecting the price to the down side. With chromium, even if you could corner all of the north American market, you are looking at several hundred thousand tons of ferrochrome at best.
The problem with this metal is that you can not dump a lot of it without serious price depreciation and if you put out the cash to build a mine then because of that limited market you have a much longer pay back period on your investment. I think Noront said somewhere ( Analyst Workshop? ) that they hoped, or expected, to catch at best about 3% of the market (250,000 tons).
Don't take my word for it, read the reports, Noront's?

With Noront's resource you are not dependent much on nickel prices because it is a
multi-metal resource. Copper alone would most likely pay for the mining of the ore,
precious metals pay for the operations and the nickel comes out practically for free to quickly pay back for capital expense and then result in clear and substantial profit thereafter.
Yes it is a simplistic analogy but close to the mark.

"when is someone going to want to tie up hundreds of millions for long term development."
Which long term development. The pay back should be several times faster for nickel than for the chromite mine. It is with chromite that you tie up capital and end up paying interest on that capital for years because the income from operations will be limited per year.
I think here you are turning the facts around.

I happen to think that Noront is making the play for FWR to join the two resources into one so that both would benefit from the limited market otherwise one could be blocked out and Noront wants to be sure that it is part of the production. Finally but of a lesser importance, is the economy of production scale.

In the 2009 Analyst Workshop, in the title you have Nickel, Copper, PGM's, Chromite and
Vanadium in that order. Is it just happen chance that chromite is fourth in sequence of listed metals?
I do not think so. The company puts it's most valuable resource up front ( not necessarily in dollar terms) with the rest following in order of importance.