"too costly to renovate"

When is this cliche excuse ever going to go away? Everyone in any way involved in historic preservation knows that this lame excuse is rarely anything more than a convenient lie. Unfortuneately, there are still too many people that believe this lie, therefore, it continues to be used. One of its latest uses was to "explain" why two houses, located nextdoor to each other on E. 115th Street, just off of Euclid Avenue -- both built for brewery magnate Simon Fishel in 1908, one occupied by a son and the other occupied by a married daughter -- were recently demolished by the owner, a prominent institution in the C. W. R. U. vicinity. Additionally, some reference was made to some vague retail/residential development that they expected to occur, sooner or later -- and, so, why not just make a couple more parcels available? Regardless of the stated excuses, this is just another example of the indifference toward local history and the built monuments that are the remaining testimonies to that history. Will some of us see the day when all the historic buildings are destroyed??