For-Profit or For Community Benefit? (Mutually Exclusive?)

What’s the responsibility of a for-profit business owner to the community? Should for-profit private businesses be the way we preserve cherished neighborhood institutions? The recent news that a completely unrelated third-party group has formed a committee to tell a private business how it should use its business resources is a well-intentioned disaster in the making.

I love the Castro theatre, I love the Castro, I'm openly gay, I'm not a theatre buff but I like the organ a lot, and I am thoroughly frustrated by everything about the Castro Theatre goes APE (Another Planet Entertainment) saga.

The SF Chronicle's exclusive about the plans to renovate the Castro Theatre and the responses of the conservancy group in hopes of preserving the structure to support its historic LGBTQ+ film events.

In reading the articles and considering both sides of the proverbial coin, I came away with way more questions than answers.

Question 1: How Much Freedom Does a Business Owner Have to Run Their Business?

• If a business accepts community, city, or other public funds, does that change your answer?
• If a location has a historic relationship to and roots in the neighborhood does that change your answer?

or, asked another way...

Question 1 (remix): Who Decides What's Worthy of Cultural Preservation? And Who Has to Pay For It?

• Does a private business owner have an obligation to preserve cultural heritage?
• Is preserving portions of a cultural resource a reasonable compromise, or is it an "all or nothing" proposition?

Question 2:

• Ask yourself these same questions changing "business owner" to "homeowner" and "business" to "home" - How do your answers change?

Bonus Question:

Isn't this a business example of the residential gentrification conundrum created by America's choice to link the preservation of our cultural heritage and the development/re-development of residential homes to for-profit corporations?

Final Question: What do you think?