That would be a shame. I think many people underestimate the local "landmark" importance of industrial chimneys and they are in many cases aesthetically impressive though its understandable how some may not see that in the least. Case in point would be the Powerhouse development in LIC where they removed the original cast iron chimneys totally destroying, imo, the appeal of the whole project. The original plan called for keeping them and would have been so much better than what was built:
http://www.pbase.com/image/42994331.jpg