Channeling Bueller

A lot of effort is being expended by a lot of people in anguishing over the state of State Street and its increasing number of vacant storefronts. All are to be commended for caring, but the solution seems obvious: Landlords need to reduce rents and lease rates to what the market can bear, sustainably.

I’ll never understand why landlords will keep places vacant, at inflated above-market asking prices, rather than reduce rent-lease prices to affordable levels that would support and sustain local business tenants. “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?” (Said Ben Stein, a real-life conservative economist, playing a teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.)