https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3622129,-121.9960813,3a,75y,...
I believe there is a documentary movie someone made about it maybe in the 90's.
It used to be bigger but the part furthest from lawrence expressway must have been parceled out because it was developed into homes.
Sounds like a smart investment strategy.
I have actually run into this before many times.
Also part of the tell tale sign is that she plans to rent it out. That is another signal that she just plans to wait. Most likely the lease will be written in a way that allows her to terminate it if she wants with some kind of liquidated damages payment.
Now I have seen people not want to sell 'at any price' genuinely because they do run a business, don't need the money, and most importantly (and this is key) it gives them something to do. Typically they are older people who want to show up for work every day. This woman doesn't fit that MO though.
My bet is it's a selling strategy.
I just wanted to have fun and create a little garden for myself. Now I have to become some ugly combination of Soros, Orwell, and Nader[1] because the people with money right now are all people that cared about money, or—ethically better, but consequentially worse—they're techno-optimists.
[0] The feedback function, really. Startups are just organizations in search of a feedback function.
[1] Yes. I'm aware of the irony.
Maybe. In that neighborhood, it would likely be very expensive condos, which would likely not be rented by someone already living in New York. I really doubt the extent to which all this new luxury construction is actually easing the housing problem, versus just creating additional demand akin to what happens when you add a lane to a highway.
Profits are a signal, and a powerful one at that. Outside of rent seeking, which I regard as fairly rare, profits signal that an entrepreneur is delivering value in excess of the costs to produce the value. Spread out over the size of a community, region, or nation, that's like magic!
Furthermore, they're not cold and unemotional, as is suggested here. Value almost always has an emotional component. The profitable condos that people want to build aren't going to be inhabited by automatons. They'll be inhabited by people - people who will date, get married, have children, people that will graduate from high school and college, people that will march in parades, protest in political movements, enjoy and create culture. To look at the value that companies want to create in this space like a shameless cash grabs ignores the very humanity that assigns that value in the first place.
Profits are not evil. They're a signal of efficient production of value, and value implies a benefit for humanity.
They also provide the surplus needed to deal with pollution and other externalities. It's not a coincidence that unfree economies are the worst environmental disasters.
This is a big assumption to make. Successful rent seeking is very much a constant interest of profitable organizations--why would a business leave low risk, high margin money on the table? Competition for rentier status would be just as lively as market competition were it not for regulation, and even with it the focus only shifts to competition for regulatory capture.
Big corps are making huge profits while laying people off.
Pursuit of an outcome alone isn’t enough. The process too must be in service to humanity at large to reach your conclusion.
Too many processes today benefit a minority.
Furthermore, they're not cold and unemotional, as is suggested here. Value almost always has an emotional component. The profitable clothes that sweatshops produce aren't going to be worn by automatons. They'll be worn by people - people who will date, get married, have children, people that will graduate from high school and college, people that will march in parades, protest in political movements, enjoy and create culture. To look at the value that companies want to create in sweatshops like a shameless cash grab ignores the very humanity that assigns that value in the first place.
Sweatshops are not evil. They're a tool for efficient production of value, and value implies a benefit for humanity.
Sweatshop (n.) Factory located in a country whose peasant farmers are so poor that I'd rather not think about them, and serving an export market.
The detailed analysis of how this woman who wants to hold on to a piece of sentimental property is actually mistaken, is destroying the neighborhood, is willfully naive for not exploiting her position to make as much money as possible, etc, etc is predictable but tiring.
Fears about about "cash being the sole nexus between human beings" seem pretty realized on HN. It's as if no one - or at the very least the VC crowd - accepts that anyone could be doing anything _other_ than living their life in pursuit of profit.
And if they are, they're ignorant, naive - even selfish - for not aligning their intent with a profit motive.