Speaking as someone who spent years of my life working in major recording studios—including Air Lyndhurst—during the 1990s, I can tell you that such studios have dedicated staff to maintain and service the gear there. Therefore, while any piece of equipment could potentially need service at any given time, all of it has been maintained to such a high standard that none of it should be about ready to die.
Most large consoles are built in a modular fashion so that if a channel has problems, it can simply be removed for servicing while the rest of the desk remains in use. A well-serviced 40-year-old console is probably filled with parts from a wide vintage of more recent years, and has almost certainly received more care than a typical five-year-old project studio board. As a result, I would worry more about the stability of a recent Behringer/Presonus/you-name-it small studio board than an older major studio, large format Neve or SSL.
Lastly, if you're recording an orchestra then you're likely using a lot of microphones, which need a lot of inputs, which in turn requires a large format mixing board. It's true that most of today's recording artists don't require many inputs during the tracking stage, but the mixes are still often done using Neves and SSLs as many current pop track counts are still very high and not mixed in the box.
There's a reason that many major recording studios disappeared during that last couple of decades, but a big enough demand still exists that many others have continued to thrive. From all accounts, Air Lyndhurst seems like a profitable venture.
Of course, if real estate in that neighborhood turns out to be an even more profitable investment—as happened with Hit Factory in Manhattan—then it's possible that we'll end up mourning the loss of yet another wonderful facility.
Best,
Geoff
