Hmmm, and I might get a bit philosophical in a moment, because this is about the nature of "ownership". To own something, is to control it. Now, I understand the fact that the landmark commission won't get anything monetary out of this. But they do hold control now. They say what can happen to this building. No matter what the actual owner/tenant needs to survive business wise, the commission is in control of yay or nay. Look, if the building was abandoned. Sure. I don't think this would have been a big deal of a story. Whoever owned it and it was abandoned would probably be glad if the city buys it from underneath them. There's a whole bunch of tax incentives if you're a lazy land owner. But that's not what's going on. An active business, who relies on that location and in a very, if not hyper, competitive market, requires the autonomy to make business decisions. Whether that's facade, internal remodeling, branding whatever. Now, you have a bureaucracy that gets to make decisions whether or not they can. And I'm not talking about illegal/legal enterprise. Just general business. That's the problem. If they do it to these folks, who's to say they can't just start barging into other businesses? I'm not a libertarian. I've been on multiple construction sites for what I use to do. That's the best way to realize "Oh my God... we need someone to enforce code actively... like an organized body with the ability to punish those that commit unsafe building and construction practices." So, I do believe government has it's place. What's going on here, honestly, looks like a gross abuse with the information provided. Might be more to the story. The article was indeed thin. But as it sits, this is some bullshit that they need to fight. Instead of waiting for the hearing, which is an obvious tactical play on timing, they need to file a lawsuit immediately. It does kind of reek of the whole happy New York/Amazon deal some how. That was the first thing that popped in my mind when I saw the timing of their hearing.