The sign for the incoming Kati Roll Company went up back on Thursday at 128 Second Ave. near St. Mark's Place. This will be the fourth Manhattan location for the kati roll specialists (there's one in London too). There hasn't been an opening date announced yet. Find more background on all this here.
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A sign for Odd Eye NYC recently arrived at 524 E. Fifth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B... a nearby resident said that it will be a multimedia studio...
The previous tenant here, the designers Heights + Kenchi, moved to Ninth Street.
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[Photo from Friday]
Several EVG readers shared the latest stack of legalese affixed to the Empire Biscuit front door of the storefront at 198 Avenue A between 12th Street and 13th Street... a final judgement of eviction...
According to the legal documents (the most recent batch to arrive here), the owner is in arrears on rent and back taxes to the sum of $106,000.
Empire Biscuit, which opened in the fall of 2013, was only open a few days this year back in January.
Empire Biscuit owes over $100k in back rent? That's insane. Why didnt the landlord file suit and take possession sooner? Looks like the only one worse at business than the biscuit boys was their landlord.
ReplyDeleteWow, we can only wonder what the hell went wrong here. A warning to those with hopes of opening a business in today's East Village maybe.
ReplyDeleteUh oh, Empire Biscuit. Mom and Dad are really gonna be pissed this time.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who has been paying attention would not open any business here unless he or she had 100K to THROW AWAY. Look at all of the destabilized businesses (and even formerly stable ones) that have up and moved because the RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH. If six months is your goal, then sure, by all means....we all know your tenure will be brief.
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:43: Re: back rent. It takes a long time for the legal process to grind on. It is not as you imagine it--one month in arrears and you file--get your money or get the tenant out.
ReplyDeleteHey, I never cashed in my kick starter high-five, rats!
ReplyDeleteIt was so misleading of the Empire Biscuit people to post that Peelin' Potatoes sign. If they weren't paying the rent, they knew they weren't coming back. Why put up that sign and make people think their return is imminent? We all knew it wasn't as the days, weeks and months went by. They acted like they were making renovations and opening soon with a more diverse menu.
ReplyDeleteAre we sure they're just not in the back amidst mountains of spuds and merely forgot to 1) open the doors, 2) make and sell biscuits, and 3) pay the rent? One can get quite involved in the business of denuding taters!
ReplyDeleteKati Roll is going in where The Stage Deli was, correct? If so, I'll be sure to never eat there!
ReplyDeleteThe closed-Empire Biscuit and its 'peelin potatoes' signage has been there so long it's pretty much an upper Avenue A institution at this point. Strange to say but I will sort of miss seeing it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a business owner, so I hope someone can clue me in - what happens to these people whose businesses are forced to close due to so much money owed? Do they get loans to fund something else to pay for the debt, do they settle in court, to they declare bankruptcy and get the debt forgiven? The money must have to come from somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWhat ever happened to the Super Dive owners?
Hurry up Kati Roll! My mouth can only water for so long.
ReplyDeleteCON ED finally turned off the power to Empire a few weeks back. As they say
ReplyDelete'every empire must fall"!!!
In many cases like this, the owners of the business, if they weren't able to work out a payment plan to pay back rent, will declare bankruptcy, and the landlords, vendors, employees and others owed money will get in line to get whatever they can.
ReplyDelete2:12 PM: They were a corporation, which I'm sure has no assets other than what they left behind, so they will cease operations, and that will be the end of the story. I wonder why the landlord didn't have the biscuiteers personally sign for the rent, and why he let this drag on for three seasons.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, and I don't by any means, the individual owners should get away with this pretty much free of charge. if they set up their shell corporations properly, they should be able to file bankruptcy on those corps, the landlord will be out all the money and the individual owners won't really be personally affected or held responsible. (I read Art of the Deal which is why I know this. Believe me. Believe me.)
ReplyDeleteThe multi-page documents isn't an eviction notice. It's a request for a warrant of eviction. Basically, it's the last step before getting the actual eviction, notifying the lessee that it has to show up in court to offer some kind of defense or the warrant will be issued. I doubt such defense will be forthcoming.
ReplyDeleteRemember that the landlord was probably fully prepared to let the storefront sit empty the whole time. This way it extracted some rent for some time, and still has juicy losses to use as writeoffs without the neighborhood complaining that it let the spot go unoccupied. It may not be all that bothered by the turn of events.
This is not a sustainable system.
"still has juicy losses to use as writeoffs." Whomever started this myth on this board also ought to read art of the deal or some book about business and accounting. No business prefers losses to revenues. It is insane. Please stop.
ReplyDelete@7:47PM. The Art of the Deal was written by the same guy that took over $900 million in losses as a tax writeoof so he wouldn't pay taxes for 20 years, so there's at least one businessman who had juicy losses to use as tax writeoff, and his name is Donald Trump. He may be insane, but he's also insanely rich, in good part due to those tax writeoffs.
ReplyDelete"No business prefers losses to revenues. It is insane. Please stop."
ReplyDeleteIt absolutely depends on the circumstances. If the landlord can't make more money renting the place than it can using losses on it to offset income elsewhere for tax purposes (keeping in mind that without a tenant in place the amount of the losses becomes fairly manipulable), it won't rent the place. This is obvious: setting up an exaggerated example, if the landlord had to choose between renting a building for $1 profit on that building alone versus taking a $10,000 loss that could eliminate the taxes on a $10,000 gain on another building, of course it would take the latter.
Storefronts would not stand empty for multi-year periods if this were not the case. It's understandable that a landlord might not have wanted to sign a ten-year commercial lease for the rents available in, say, mid-2008. But that was getting on ten years ago.
I thought Kati Roll was the devil incarnate because they were taking over the space of the beloved Stage (ah the memory of their meatloaf and their lasagne is impressed on my brain). I guess the voices of boycott, etc. have calmed down.
ReplyDelete