Daily Hampshire Gazette Reports on Eviction Notice from Smith College

Published on GazetteNET (http://www.gazettenet.com)
Smith ends lease, but Green Street Cafe hangs on
By Kristin Palpini
Created 06/17/2009 -
NORTHAMPTON - Green Street Cafe was supposed to be vacated Sunday.
Last week owners John Sielski and Jim Dozmati received a lease termination notice from landlords, Smith College, for nonpayment of rent. The June 8 letter stated that cafe owners had five days to vacate 64 Green St. or pay the outstanding three months' rent.
But on Tuesday the money had not been paid and, in defiance of Smith's notice, it was business as usual at the French cuisine restaurant the two men started 18 years ago.
That afternoon, Sielski was sitting with customers in the main dining room going over a riffled-through newspaper. A waitress dressed in a black and white striped dress answered phones and brought tea to tables. The first-floor dining room carried a light aroma of white wine sauce. The restaurant hummed with light jazz music punctuated by the pinched beeps of a front-loader backing up outside.
"It was scary when that letter came last week," said Sielski. "The notice to vacate, the day we got it, it didn't hit us. The next day it was hard to put one foot in front of the other."
The notice to vacate is the latest twist in a five-year struggle between the college and the cafe over use of the 3,000-square-foot space at 64 Green St. The two have been wrangling over what, if anything, Smith College owes the cafe, due to disruptions caused by Smith's construction of Ford Hall, a 140,000-square-foot engineering and science building next door to the cafe.
Laurie Fenlason, Smith College's executive director of public affairs, confirmed the notice to vacate and said the college does not have any immediate plans for the cafe property.
"This all transpired very recently, and we haven't begun any discussions about future plans for the space," Fenlason said in an email to the Gazette.
Sielski said he has no plans to close Green Street Cafe. He and Dozmati will attempt to pay the back rent. A Smith College alumna and Florence resident, Jan Carhart, has offered to pay money owed to Smith, but it is unclear if the cash will be accepted by the college.
In the meantime, Sielski and Dozmati will continue to run the cafe until some kind of agreement is reached or they are forced out of the building.
"We'll put all the staff in camouflage," Sielski joked.
"This is just what we do," he added. "We're just going to come in here and try to concentrate on what it takes to run the cafe."
The latest twist
The relationship between Smith College and the Green Street Cafe was not always this contentious. For the first 13 years of the cafe's lease, the restaurant was an unofficial extension of the Smith College campus, catering events, hosting meetings and private engagements. Art, poetry readings and live music have long been a staple.
Around 2004, Smith College started moving forward with plans to develop an academic engineering building next door to the eatery. After that, the relationship between the cafe and the college was never the same.
Smith wanted the cafe to relocate and offered to pay $65,000 for moving expenses, but owners estimated it would cost $300,000 to relaunch the cafe in another location.
The cafe maintained its home on Green Street throughout construction, but closed for seven months in 2007 due to fire code violations, which also resulted in the restaurant's liquor license being suspended. The license was restored and the cafe reopened in September 2007.
Sielski said he fell three months behind in rent mostly due to a lack of revenue.
The restaurant's temporary closure severely interrupted business and the clientele has yet to rebound to pre-closing numbers, Sielski said. Also, Green Street Cafe has more recently been hamstrung by a lack of parking. According to a lawsuit filed by the cafe owners against Smith, the restaurant's back parking lot has been obstructed by Ford Hall construction. Sielski also complained that spaces along surrounding streets periodically have been made unavailable due to construction. In April, a judge ruled in favor of Smith, saying the college would suffer a greater loss if the work were prevented than the cafe would if it were allowed.
"You lose your parking, you lose your business," Sielski said.
Cafe owners are also grappling with $150,000 in back taxes owed to Northampton.
In the end, Smith wasn't paid because owners didn't have enough money to cover all their bills, Sielski said. Something had to go. Sielski said he and Dozmati decided to pay back a plumbing contractor instead of Smith.
"They stopped our ability to pay our rent when they took away our parking lot," Sielski said. "Effectively, they took away our business - it's not just parking spaces."
Now Sielski and Dozmati are trying to figure out how to keep Green Street Cafe alive despite the notice to vacate. Carhart, a longtime patron, has offered to pay the back rent to Smith College. She spoke with the college's attorney, but has not heard whether her money will be accepted, she said.
"It's not about getting our money back - we'll eat it off there in no time," Carhart said. By paying "the back rent, I would hope that it would at least freeze things for a while. I hope they (Smith and Green Street Cafe) would negotiate something that makes more sense."
Many options appear to be on the table for Sielski and Dozmati at the moment. Over a cup of tea Tuesday afternoon, Sielski discussed paying the back rent, legal options, starting another prepay dinner and lunch campaign, and moving the restaurant outside of Northampton.
Sielski, 60, acknowledged that opening a new restaurant at his age would be difficult, but the business is in his blood.
"This is our life," he said. "This is what we do."
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