It's hard to think that the people would have loved those buildings (two local iconic landmarks were less than 100m away), but you raise a good point in that pe

It's hard to think that the people would have loved those buildings (two local iconic landmarks were less than 100m away), but you raise a good point in that perhaps it was about drumming up support for the replacement, as in "anything but that!". Also, I wonder if there wasn't a high-level political interest in keeping the buildings around, and drumming up public discord over them might have helped seal the backroom deals?