Why Couldn't Mr. Peebles.....

....simply sell out his property, and retire to Florida? That one-story shop was on a corner street in the downtown section of a large city (presumably New York). The air rights would have been way too valuable for such a small building. Any developer would have been willing to pay Mr. Peebles hundreds of millions of dollars for the property (I am assuming Peebles owned the property; otherwise his landlord would've kicked him out long ago).