Comment by epistasis

Profitability doesn't only come from large corporations. And it's likely that many large corporations would shut down businesses too if it impacted them.

The limit is that if no other more profitable business exists, the landlord lowers rent until they get some one. But that's often a multi year discovery process. And it's very likely that person will be some other small business that wouldn't have had a chance if the same spot was occupied.

It's hard to overstate just how much the random subsidy is for Prop 13 taxes; there is literally a 20x difference purely based on when a property was purchased or a building was built. This leads to very poor and inefficient allocation of real estate to businesses.