An epic tenant-versus-landlord battle erupted at Floyd’s
Coffee Shop on SE Morrison last week, after tension behind the scenes
over rent and utilities led to police involvement and a midnight
stakeout.
Five years ago, Jack Inglis and his wife Cris Chapman opened the
bright yellow drive-through café in the corner of the King
Harvest Natural Foods building on SE 15th and Morrison. Things went
downhill fast. After a year, landlord Howard Durand (the owner of King
Harvest) handed the couple a utility bill—scrawled on a receipt
slip—for $7,814. Inglis and Chapman refused to pay the hefty sum
for their 500 or 600-square-foot coffee shop (the landloard and tenant
cannot agree on the size). Durand refused to negotiate. Two weeks
later, Floyd’s received an eviction notice. From there, communication
between the neighbors degenerated into emails from lawyers and notes
slipped under their shared door.
“He’s got zero ethics,” says Inglis.
“I still feel like they owe me money,” says Durand.
With business booming at the coffee shop, the tension got worse. In
June 2006, Durand’s lawyer sent Floyd’s an email saying rent should
increase from $1,000 a month to $6,150 a month, plus utilities. That
proposed rent increase was unsuccessful.
As the end of the five-year lease approached, Durand tried to raise
the rent again, this time asking for nine percent of the café’s
gross sales. Inglis became certain that Durand was trying to take over
the thriving coffee shop, equipment included, to make it his own.
As weeks ran out on the lease, which expired at midnight on May 1,
the Floyd’s staff secretly moved all the supplies and equipment to the
new storefront just 50 yards away, sublet to them by neighborhood bar
Crush. On April 30, Inglis decided to camp out in the café,
sleeping with one eye open on a small cot.
“I knew he was going to attempt something!” says Inglis. “I’ve been
battling this guy for four years!” As expected, six minutes after
midnight, Durand pulled up with a crew full of workers.
Inglis whipped out the lease, both men exchanged “heated words,” and
Inglis wound up calling the police, who arrived and told Durand he and
his crew should probably leave. Durand says the idea that he would
start a new café with Floyd’s equipment is “absurd” and that the
whole thing was a misunderstanding—he thought the lease expired
on midnight of April 30.
At dawn, the Floyd’s staff painted over their yellow sign, opened
its doors half a block away, and did not miss a single day of business.
In the old drive-through, a new coffee shop is now open for business:
King Harvest Coffee.
I think we dealt with this about a week ago. Perhaps some new content, Sarah?
So what’s the punch line here? A tenant owes a landlord money? Woo hoo? Easy- tenant pays landlord end of story… oh but wait, he didn’t pay and somehow still occupies the building? Only in the Portlandistan.
No, GDiddy, the tenant no longer occupies the building. They had to move down the street, two doors down in the middle of the night otherwise the landlord was going to lock them out of the shop and try to take their equipment. All this because the landlord raised the rent suddenly from 1,000 a month to 6,000 a month. It’s clear what the landlord was trying to do here.
Diddly Squat
I have known Mr. Harvest King for a very long time. I also knew Danny who had owned the previous shop but was kicked out for never-explained-to-me reasons. The new owners becoming FLOYDS. The new owners/operators completely changed the looks and business climate from what the Danny’s coffee shop had been. Business boomed, the neighborhood embraced FLOYDS and how it operated. A fairly-successful business became a thriving coffee enterprise.
Did greed and business envy play a part in King Harvest owner’s attitudes and actions towards FLOYDS? That is not for me to judge. But strange to me was the numbers of plumbing trucks, electricians, sign people on the spot the next day to install the King Harvest coffee operation. Those kinds of workers do not materialize overnight. Free coffee signs went up and other enticements. Now electric signs are lighted into the night; I assume hoping to identify a coffee place.
FLOYDS added to the mix of new businesses recently opened along the block. I am sure FLOYDS will have continuing success in their new location simply because they understand what customers need, expect, and want from a good coffee house.
That’s crazy! Psycho landlords suck. I’m never going to patronize King Harvest after learning this.