Sorry, but I've got to rain in on the parade a bit. Let's start with the "beauty" of Tempelhof. It simply doesn't exist. The building is ugly as hell and is a typical example of Nazi-architecture, designed to intimidate the beholder and definitely not for beauty (but, unfortunately, we're not going to get rid of this monstrous building). Yeah, it's impressive, but for all the wrong reasons. And yeah, there's a certain element of nostalgia also for me, having flown from Tempelhof (as SLF) since I was a small kid in the sixties, but so what?
Closing it down isn't just a question of incompetence, or even, as someone suggested, kick-backs and greed, at least as far as I can tell. I think it's undisputed that Berlin needs a larger, modern airport. Until yesterday we had three airports, two of them directly in the inner city. (Surprisingly, most proponents of Tempelhof don't mention that Tegel (EDDT) isn't that much further away from the city center than Tempelhof and don't complain about it getting closed down in the forseeable future.) Both of the inner city airports can't be extended. The only one that can is Schönefeld (EDDB), but, for several legal reasons, that's impossible unless the other two get closed. Keeping Tempelhof open for much longer would have opened up legal loopholes that would have further delayed the expansion of Schönefeld and might even have killed the whole project, so the Berlin City Council actually didn't have much of a choice at all (ironically, the opposition party, which is now so outspoken against closing Tempelhof, was in power when the whole process got started, knowing very well all the consequences).
Finally, as someone living beneath the approach path to EDDI I for sure will miss the view of landing airplanes coming directly my way but I definitely won't miss the noise;-)