The Domino falls in Williamsburg.

We realize that times change and that history no longer means much to most people. Still, we can't help but feel a twang of remorse every time another New York landmark vanishes. Especially when the circumstances surrounding its disappearance are so ugly.

In 2000, for instance, the city rushed its bulldozers to Coney Island before daybreak to perform a blitzkrieg demolition of the Thunderbolt. Despite a grassroots effort and the fact that the aging roller coaster was on the verge of being granted landmark status, the city razed it before that could happen, essentially because city officials thought it would be an eyesore to the baseball fans they were trying to lure to KeySpan Park. A jury last Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by the developer who owned the Thunderbolt, in spite of the clear lies that were behind the city's underhanded pre-dawn operation. It was sad and infuriating news.

We were equally saddened to hear of the closing of the 148-year-old Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg. Not just because of its history, and not just because 200 employees (many of whom had worked at the plant for 30 years or more) were losing their jobs, but also because of what was behind the plant's closing.

Local media accounts tended toward the melancholy and sepia-toned. "It was here before the Brooklyn Bridge and was here long after the Dodgers," many of them pointed out. But most of these stories concluded that when you get right down to it, business is business, and yes?times change.

The American Sugar Refining Company bought the plant in 2001 with an eye toward closing it, claiming the Domino plant couldn't keep up with America's three other plants nationwide. What's more, over the past 25 years, the refined sugar industry has taken its lumps: the result of changing diets, increased health consciousness and a greater dependence on corn syrup and beet sugar. By 2002, the Brooklyn plant was producing less than half its potential annual output.

While all that may be true, it has little, if anything, to do with the real reason why the factory closed after the last shift on Friday.

The real reason can be found in the final paragraph of the Associated Press story?a paragraph that, interestingly enough, was excised when the story was reprinted in Friday's Post: "The waterfront property?would be far more valuable if reincarnated as luxury housing in a gentrified neighborhood where lofts can sell for $1 million."

There you have it in a nutshell. Yeah, that beet sugar took its toll, and it really is too bad about all those workers losing their jobs and everything. But on the bright side, within two or three years, after some minor renovations, that 11-story, 19th-century riverfront building will be able to provide much-needed housing for rich assholes.