One sad milestone in a business' decline is when they come to find that the real estate they hold-once incidental-has become more valuable than the actual business conducted on the real estate. Wall Street firms collapse and sell their towering headquarters for liquidity. Nobody wants to eat at Ruby Tuesdays any more, but they sure have lots of parcels of land! And...cue segue to the newspaper industry. Gnomish tightwad and Tribune Co. chief Sam Zell wants to sell the Chicago Tribune's headquarters for condos. They're more lucrative than newspapers these days: First people thought Zell would just sell the Tribune's tower, then lease it back and keep the paper there. But no!:

But hold on. Sources said Zell, who has hired Eastdil Secured LLC to market the tower and a parking lot abutting it, is thinking big. They said Zell wants nothing better than to turn over all of Tribune Tower to a residential developer. Such an owner could use it as a Gothic ornament for new construction on the parking lot.

Sad Tribune breakdown: Nobody wants the paper. Nobody even wants the paper's building. But that parking lot is nice! [Sun-Times]