65 year old dive bar in an arts district or stairwell for a suburban-style apartment building?

 This building, in the heart of Phoenix's Roosevelt Row arts district has been a living public art installation since artist Ted De Grazia paid his bar tab in 1950 with a 47 foot long mural depicting the history of alcohol along with the 1991 Partridge Family's Danny Bonaduce getting into an alley brawl with one of the transgender sex workers, and is currently a local art, furniture, logotype and craft store whose proprietrices have commissioned sculptures and murals on the building's surface. The building was slapped together in a rough downtown at a time when designers and developers knew how a commercial building communicates with the people walking a city's walkways. It is perfect for the regular artwalks and street festivals that have developed in this area the past 20 years, which is the reason developers are interested in building here now. Does anyone think a fire stairwell and mechanicals shaft will charm people into walking inside? What is this developer thinking - bulldozing this building into rubble along this street of all the streets in downtown rather than cantilevering over it in order to keep the cultural momentum going?