The Garden at 1503 Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray (staff photo by James Cullum)
A popular beer garden in Del Ray will remain open in the winter as its owners fight a legal battle with their landlords, who are seeking to evict them.
For the last five years, Jeremy Barber and Justis Frank, the owners of The Garden (1503-1505 Mount Vernon Avenue), shut down during the winter and reopened in the spring. Their landlord, Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC, is seeking to evict them, and previously forgave their rent during those months, but no longer. With all parties returning to the General District Court on January 8, Barber and Frank will pay monthly rent and plan to keep a heated area in the back of the property open.
“Come see us this winter, because we’re gonna stay open,” Barber told ALXnow. “We’re going to be doing some events back there to get people in November, December, and January. We’re going to do a mocktail bar for a dry January back there, and it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be heated. We’ll have TVs to show games, all that stuff.”
Barber said that the upcoming General District Court date will determine whether both cases will be heard separately or together.
The Garden at 1503 Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray (staff photo by James Cullum)
In late August, Barber and Frank filed a lawsuit in the Alexandria Circuit Court against their landlords, who listed the property available for rent on Sept. 1. Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC then filed an eviction lawsuit in the General District Court.
Barber and Frank say in their lawsuit that Twenty-Third Street Corridor will not honor the five-year renewal option on their lease, which expires in November.
Stratis and Georgia Voustas are the principals of Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC. Their filing states that Barber and Frank are paying the default rent and are operating under a month-to-month lease.
In August, Paul Voustas emailed ALXnow that he could not comment on the situation between the landlord and the tenant, but confirmed his firm has “been instructed to list the property for lease by the trust that owns the property,” and that “We are actively seeking a new tenant with a start day of September of this year.”
A Loopnet.com listing for the property is no longer being advertised on the website.
Marketing materials for the property list it as a “former beer garden” and request that the current tenant not be disturbed. Paul Voustas, the son of Stratis and Georgia Voustas, manages the listing. He is also listed as the president of Papadopoulos-Voutsas Investments & Management (PVIM LLC).
“While at PVIMllc we have no reason to doubt the accuracy of any of the information supplied, we cannot, and do not, guarantee its accuracy in this brochure,” state marketing materials for the property. “All information should be independently verified before a purchase or lease of the property. We are not responsible for errors, omissions, misuse, or misinterpretation of information contained herein and make no warranty of any kind, express or implied, with respect to the property or any other matters.”
Georgia Voustas told ALXnow that Barber and Frank took advantage of her and her husband, and that the rent wasn’t raised for five years.
“They violated the terms of our lease, allowed the place to fall into disrepair to the point where it even threatened the health of the patrons,” Voustas said. “Then they tried to shake us down for tens of thousands of dollars to force us to make the repairs that they were responsible for under a triple net lease.”
The Garden at 1503 Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray (staff photo by James Cullum)
Barber and Frank contend that after a deal to buy the 10,700-square-foot property fell through, the landlords spent the next seven months trying to evict them through default notices over property repair issues. In a previous interview, Frank said their base rent for the lease extension should remain $5,625 per month, but that Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC sent back a revised lease with a base rent of $10,000 per month, rising to $15,000 by the end of the five-year extension.
With neither side providing documentation, Voustas said Barber and Frank aren’t being honest about the figures.
“Now they’ll be responsible for paying rent during the winter months — when they usually shut down operations,” Voustas said. “In the past, we always deferred rent collection until spring, when the beer garden reopened and they were generating income.”
The Garden at 1503 Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray (staff photo by James Cullum)
Comments are closed.