I'm predicting someone will scoop up the company, develop the real estate, and attempt to relocate the entire company to a new cheaper facility somewhere nearby. But Steinway will most likely lose something special in the process of moving either through attrition or morale or just plain ol' disrupting the assembly line and the company will never be the same afterward.

I was reminded of the story of the Vienna Sausage factory in Chicago, our most famous brand of Chicago hot dogs. They moved to a new facility and instantly had a quality problem with their hot dogs. Luckily, it was tracked down:

"The reason, which they only figured out while chatting about the old days, was Irving who didn’t make the move to the new plant, but who had wheeled the hot dogs from the manufacutring room to the smoke house. The thing was that this took a while and served as a cooling period because it took 30 minutes to do the walk through the twisting factory. There was no Irving at the new plant – there was no need – and it was Irving’s trip was the secret ingredient. So they built a new room to leave them in and cool and that new addition was to recreate teh effect of Irvings walk."[1]

[1]: http://inreblog.com/2008/12/19/in-re-irving-the-secret-ingre...