WICHITA — Olive Tree Restaurant Corp. president Joumana Toubia has more to say regarding the eviction notice for her restaurants — Olive Tree Bistro, its banquet hall and Chelsea’s Bar and Grill.
Toubia was busy with an event Tuesday afternoon and didn’t have time to respond to attorney Jeff Kennedy’s comments about why her businesses are being evicted.
Today, in an e-mailed response, Toubia said her rent has been paid up to September but that she then stopped paying after that due to problems with the property that have not been adequately addressed.
“The unwillingness of the landlord to fulfill its obligations to repair or replace fundamental services to the building for a period in excess of two years is, from our point of view, certainly a significant issue. Rainwater pouring through the ceiling into buckets is a much better way to describe what the landlord characterizes as ‘moisture problem’. We have lived with these problems repeatedly, to the extent that they are no longer tolerable. Whatever representations the landlord has made to remedy our issues since we quit paying rent in September remain inadequate.”
Both sides say there is much more to come.
We’ll keep you posted.
3 Comments
A great location for another Lord’s Diner!
Sure. Because we all know the best way to get something fixed is to stop paying your bills. Getting evicted and your credit rating bashed will show them. Brilliant plan. Your next landlord will be impressed.
Hemogoblin: In some cases, withholding rent is the only leverage a tenant has with a landlord. We’ve faced that in Delano; if you drive down Douglas you’ll note there’s a very prominent range of boarded-up windows on an annex to one of our most historic buildings… and a tenant who finally gave up and moved out.
Sure, the City has codes that require that historic facade to be maintained or fines assessed (and correspondingly, there is money available to help offset the cost), but it’s apparently possible for a landlord to plead hardship indefinitely. It’s not, on the other hand, possible for a retail business to thrive indefinitely when the place looks boarded up.
All I know about the Olive Tree is what I’ve read here, but it sure sounds the same to me: not possible for a restaurant to thrive indefinitely once the Health Department hears about that kind of thing.