Comment by BrenBarn

Well, one relevant angle may just be that the companies are big enough to have an incentive calculus that's not aligned with the effects on local areas where such unused businesses are. They can maybe take some kind of tax writeoff, hold it as a hedge in case land values rise, etc. But the basic idea is they are using the property in a manner that crosscuts multiple markets, whereas for average citizens in the town with the vacant building, it's just a vacant building. It's not good for the scale of business operations to diverge so much from the scale of ordinary humans.