In the comments section of that article, the writer (Stefanos Chen) listed a few additional reasons for corporate landlords to maintain the status quo: The tax

In the comments section of that article, the writer (Stefanos Chen) listed a few additional reasons for corporate landlords to maintain the status quo: The tax benefits for landlords who keep a space vacant may be overstated. While it's possible that the property owner can sometimes find a tax advantage to keeping the space empty, there are a number of other scenarios that incentivize them to keep a building empty. For example, some owners are waiting out the leases of adjacent tenants in the same property, so they can resell or redevelop the entire lot. They're betting that they will make more from a mixed-use apartment building than they would from commercial rent alone. Others owners are simply in a holding pattern, because they are still collecting rent from a corporate tenant and have no incentive to move quickly. I've heard of a number of cases where the pharmacy landlord received appealing offers from well known brands, but turned them down, because they don't want to spend the money to reconfigure or subdivide their space.