What I can add is that I have dealt with the man who made the decision to sell the Armory and turn it into a porn film studio: Larry Badiner. Larry is a very smart, politically astute and gentle man.
Larry's
decision represents the intersection of two major forces in our
society: politics and commerce. Politics is the non-moral system that
has been developed to conciliate the conflicts of power, social
interests and ethical values in our polity. Commerce is the non-moral
system that seeks to reduce costs and satisfy the expressed desires of
the marketplace.
These two forces converged on the San Francisco Armory.
The political system mediated (1) the forces opposed to any use of a monumental site with historic attributes, (2) the political values of Lefty voters who believe the City needs subsidized housing, (3) nearby businesses that want foot traffic and (4) developers who see a vacant piece of land worth $100 per square foot. The mediation led to a stalemate because the Planning Department reports to the Board of Supervisors and there is no higher authority in this political system. None, short of a multi-million dollar citizen referendum.
The system of commerce, spent twenty years sorting through the deck of potential businesses that could survive within the S.F. political constraints and connect the price of the property to any collection of buyers in the marketplace. Lo and behold, lovers of Sado-masochistic films pay enough money for the final retail graphic products to justify including the production done inside the walls of the S.F. Armory. The price of thousands of retail SM porn videos was high enough to justify a price that would buy the Armory and still remain within the political constraints that require no changes to the external image or overall footprint of the Armory.
When the Planning Department approved a project (sale of the Armory to kink.com) that was fully within its
legal domain, especially when it did so quietly, the issue had a
final resolution at the Planning Department level.
Larry Badiner was the man to reconcile politics and commerce. He knew that once he had approved a sale of the Armory to a porn group, the decision could not be reversed by the political system. Ordinarily this intersection of politics and commerce is where corruption occurs. Badiner knew that the taint of corruption would ultimately unravel his solution to the intractable political stalemate...so I'm sure there was no corruption.
Just a smile on Larry Badiner's face. He had reconciled two colossal forces, political and commercial, with his own little signature.