Orlando officials bent over backward in late 2010 to help open Draft Global Beer Lounge across the street from
Amway Center.
Between
a renovation allowance, rent forgiveness, a grant and a donation from a
city commissioner's district budget, the city has given the bar owners
more than $300,000 of taxpayer money. Now it turns out that the city's
tenants in the publicly owned building paid no rent for nearly a year.
Even
so, city officials agreed three months ago to reassign the lease,
allowing a new company controlled by the old tenant's main investor — a
player for the
NFL's
Philadelphia Eagles — to shrug off the $57,000 in back rent and utilities owed to Orlando taxpayers.
"They
allowed the same people … to start over from zero with a clean slate,"
said Willie Fisher, one of the bar's founders who is now in a legal
dispute with his former partners.
Fisher said the transfer of the
lease was rushed, improper and allowed only because one of his former
partners has a separate professional relationship with City Hall's top
administrator and City Commissioner
Daisy Lynum.
"It's totally unethical," Fisher said.
Fisher
is referring to Kimberly Stewart, a member of Draft's original parent
company who is also a financial adviser. Lynum said Stewart at one time
handled one of her retirement accounts. Orlando Chief Administrative
Officer Byron Brooks said he remains one of Stewart's investment
clients.
But Lynum and Brooks were both unequivocal in saying that
relationship had no bearing on the city's decision to shift Draft's
lease to the new company.
"That is blatantly false and I'm
offended that [Fisher] would even make such an assertion," Brooks said.
"I've not had any direct involvement with the lease or the lease
arrangements."
Jameil McWhorter, attorney for both the new company
and the old company, blames Fisher and his partner Pat Nix for
mismanaging the bar and failing to pay rent and other bills.
"The
new owner of Draft is working very diligently to pay vendors, meet its
financial obligations and handle its business affairs in an effort to
remain a valuable employer and partner in the downtown area and to
ensure that Draft is successful,'' McWhorter wrote in an email to the
Orlando Sentinel on behalf of Stewart and Eagles cornerback Dominique
Rodgers-Cromartie.
The club occupies the most visible spot in a
row of ground-floor businesses in the city-owned Church Street Parking
Garage, across the street from Amway Center. City leaders were excited
to have the business move in, hoping the high-end bar would bring more
foot traffic west of
Interstate 4 and into Parramore.
The
City Council approved a five-year, $4,456-a-month lease in November
2010, just a month after the Orlando Magic's new home court opened. The
owners invested in extensive renovations, adding restrooms, a commercial
kitchen, and a new air-conditioning system, flooring, lighting and two
bar areas.
But
it wasn't without help from taxpayers. City Hall chipped in $155,000
toward the renovation, didn't charge rent for the five months it took
workers to finish renovating the space and gave the business another
three months of free rent once the doors opened to the public.
Around
the same time, the City Council gave the business a $40,000 grant to
pay for cash registers and other equipment under a program meant to
assist minority-owned businesses. A month later, Lynum used a budget
meant for capital improvements in her district to give Draft a $22,000
"emergency business assistance" grant.
Records show that the
justification for using taxpayer money to help the business was the need
to eradicate "slum and blight" conditions in Parramore by creating a
vibrant retail area.
The business was supposed to begin paying
rent in August 2011, but records show the tenant didn't pay rent then or
for the next 10 months. An internal memo indicates city officials met
with the owners about the unpaid rent several times and were told
business had been poor. As the rent bill mounted, the city made no move
to evict its tenant, a company called 301 at 333 West
Church Street Station LLC.
In
May, the bar's attorney notified the city that the two men who had
negotiated the lease with the city, Fisher and Nix, no longer had
control of the company. The new manager was Reshard Investment Holdings
LLC, whose president is Rodgers-Cromartie.
According to records
and city officials, Rodgers-Cromartie had been a silent investor in the
bar but took a controlling interest when Fisher and Nix failed to repay
his investment.
Less than a month later, city commissioners agreed
to the tenant's request to transfer the lease to a newly created
company, RIH Draft LLC. Like its predecessor, RIH Draft LLC also is
managed by Reshard Investment Holdings LLC, and thus controlled by
Rodgers-Cromartie.
But as far as city leaders are concerned, the new company isn't liable for the $57,000 in unpaid rent and utilities.
"It's
a different corporate entity … so it's not responsible for the debt,"
said Thomas Chatmon, executive director of the city's Downtown
Development Board. "We want a viable business on that corner. It's a key
corner given its proximity to Amway Center and the foot traffic that
creates, and it was important to us that it not go dark."
City
officials say Fisher and Nix owe the back rent, though they no longer
manage the company named in the original lease. The new company began
paying the bar's monthly rent in July.
The former partners are now fighting in court over who is responsible for the bar's debts.
Draft
isn't the first tenant in the same city-owned building to run into
trouble. Among others, Johnson's Diner closed in 2010, and Oopsy Scoopsy
Yogurt Shop closed a few months ago, its owners charged with trying to
defraud the city. Both businesses also received grants from the city.
