This is the California housing crisis in a microcosm. Anything, any reason to delay building anything that would promote enough apartments for people. Driving around some of the most expensive zip codes are there are a plethora of forty to fifty year old store-front strip malls that could easily be developed to mixed use. From what I have read it's both frustrating to those who would want to buy and even more so for those who attempt to build.
Of course the extra irony here is someone confusing a laundromat with an actual historical site with some degree of gravity.