Last week, Orlando developer Cameron Kuhn bought the long-beleaguered Church Street Station complex.

CSS was the brainchild of Bob Snow, who converted the historic train station and surrounding buildings into an old-time entertainment venue call Rosie O’ Grady’s.

During the 70’s and 80’s, Rosie’s was a popular spot for locals and tourists. There was fine dining, live music – mostly dixieland jazz – and shopping.

For the past five years, CSS has been owned by boy-band creator Lou Pearlman. Like most (if not all) of Pearlman’s dealings, the purchase and operation of the complex was on the shady side. Promises were made in exchange for a backroom sweetheart deal from city, but those promises never came to fruition after the sale was closed.

Pearlman’s been bad news for downtown for a long time, but he’s loaded and connected, so he’s gotten away with giving the city the finger – until he went bankrupt. Suddenly, not-so-loaded equated into not-so-connected, and Pearlman found his assets on the auction block.

But who has $34 million lying around to buy some prime downtown real estate – to be made all the more prime by the pending plans to build a new arena down the street? Cameron Kuhn, that’s who. His goal is, after all, to own all of downtown Orlando; and he’s well on his way.

My problem with Kuhn is two-fold:

One, he doesn’t care about how his business dealings impact people other than himself. He will tear down historically signifigant buildings to build garish condo towers in an area that is already exploding with vacancy. He sees everything in terms of the bottom line and couldn’t care less about the human cost.

Two, he has to have everything, and he has to have it his way. And the city is so desparate for any sort of leadership that they trip over themselves to bask in his glow and give him whatever he asks.

To his credit, he is a self-made success. It takes real talent to build multi-million dollar condo/office towers without having to pull any money out of your own pocket. Kuhn is a master at it and has made millions doing it.

At the same time, when have you made enough money?

My problem with the Church Street deal is that part of the purchase agreement was a court order that Kuhn did not have to honor the leases of the current tenants. So the businesses that invested heavily in their locations, hung in there during the lean times and waited for the turnaround that the city promised was coming were all unceremonioulsy evicted.

Two of these places I frequent, and the people that own and operate them deserve better. One in particular is the Absinthe Bistro. The people that work there are all super cool, and the band that plays there on Wednesdays is awesome. It’s a much-needed alternative to the meat markets (both straight and gay) that make up the bulk of downtown Orlando’s night life.

Now these people that are struggling to take their businesses from zero to one have to pack up and leave their investment behind so that Kuhn Development can go from ten to eleven.

When is enough enough?