Daily Hampshire Gazette - Green Street Cafe will remain open until end of lease

Published on GazetteNET (http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/02/10/green-light-green-street-cafe-can-keep-cooking)
Green light on Green Street: Cafe can keep on cooking
By Kristin Palpini
Created on Wednesday, February 10, 2010

NORTHAMPTON - A new sign greets customers as they enter the Green Street Cafe: "The rumor of our closing is greatly exaggerated."

Mark Twain's words - written to counter widespread speculation about his death, and slightly rephrased - hold special meaning for the cafe's owners, who have been fighting eviction since July. On Tuesday, just days after a Boston Globe article called it quits for the Valley restaurant, owners John Sielski and James Dozmati signed a settlement with landlord Smith College to keep the cafe open through 2012.

The cafe had been facing eviction due to missed rent payments - just one twist in a five-year struggle between the college and the cafe over 64-68 Green St. "We're thrilled to have the restaurant back - it's a relief," Sielski said Tuesday during a lunch rush in which he was congratulated by various patrons. "Now we can focus on the food," he said.

In a statement, Kristen A. Cole, director of media relations at Smith College, said if monthly rent payments are kept current, the cafe can stay until the end of December 2012, which marks the end of the lease period. As a condition of the settlement, details of the accord must be kept private.

"We are pleased to have reached an agreement," she said. Back rent, which the college previously estimated to be about $18,000, is addressed in the settlement, said Sielski, who declined to provide further details. In addition to eviction proceedings being settled, a District Court case filed by Green Street Cafe against Smith College over an alleged lease breach was also dropped this week.

"I'm just happy to be out of court. It was weighing on us," said Sielski. "But it's not over, we still have our finances to think about," he added, noting debt the restaurant has accumulated, some of it in delinquent taxes.

Sielski said he and Dozmati have been paying off back taxes to the state for years, and the business owners have reached an arrangement to pay delinquent federal taxes. Last year, back taxes accumulated by the cafe amounted to about $150,000. "The restaurant has never generated a high profit, we just make a living," Sielski said, "but this is what we love." Food has had to share the attentions of Sielski and Dozmati along with legal wrangling for the last 5½ years.

For the first 13 years of the 18-year-old restaurant's lease, the cafe was an unofficial extension of the Smith College campus, catering events and hosting meetings and private engagements. Art, poetry and live music have long been a staple.

All that changed in 2004, when Smith College started moving forward with plans to develop an academic engineering building next door to the eatery. Smith College offered to pay $65,000 for moving expenses, but owners, who estimated the move would cost more than four times that amount, decided to stay. From then until Tuesday, the college and the restaurant have disagreed over issues that include parking and the terms of the lease agreement.

The cafe maintained its home on Green Street through construction of Ford Hall, which had a grand opening ceremony this fall, but closed in 2007 for seven months due to fire code violations. The closure cost the restaurant its liquor license, which was regained when the cafe reopened in September of that year.

The cafe owners stopped paying rent in April 2009, claiming that the college's construction was obstructing cafe parking, thereby breaching the lease. The owners filed a lawsuit in April over the perceived breach and in July the college began eviction proceedings, citing the missing rent.

With a community petition signed by 3,500 people in hand, Sielski sought and won some support from city councilors in November. In a 5-2 vote councilors approved a resolution that instructed Mayor Clare Higgins and Teri Anderson, the director of the Office of Community and Economic Development, to "take any and all reasonable actions to assist ... in a good faith effort to retain a long-standing local business."

Lawyers for the cafe and the college were slated to meet in court Tuesday to begin a jury trial regarding the eviction, but were able to avoid more court time when Sielski and Dozmati agreed to the settlement. "We had two options: one was to stay and one was to go," Sielski said. "We did think about going."

After some hesitation, Sielski said he and his partner, Dozmati, resolved to keep Green Street Cafe open at its current location through 2012. This was contrary to an article in Saturday's Boston Globe, which reported that although Smith and Green Street were negotiating, the cafe was to close sometime after Valentine's Day.

"It was surprising," Sielski said of the article, "but it also reinforced the decision we made to stay and how we felt about it closing." Sielski said he and Dozmati are excited to have three years on the lease to rejuvenate their cafe. They can put into action some plans that were on the back burner due to an uncertain future.

Among plans are the expansion of the cafe's beer garden and Fast Good, a breakfast and lunch outlet for the cafe that is separate from the dining area. Sielski also plans to expand the cafe's produce garden and start preserving more of the vegetables for the winter menu. The owners will also likely commission a new mural for the restaurant.

Sielski said he is excited about being able to accept event reservations again for large meals that include wedding rehearsal dinners and banquets. It's a revenue stream the cafe has missed when an eviction hung over the eatery. "It's the most profitable part of the business," Sielski said. "I think it will take up until next fall for that all to come back for the most part."

Sielski and Dozmati are also planning a "thank you" dinner for the cafe's supporters. A date for the dinner will be announced within the next several weeks, Sielski said. "There are still challenges ahead, but we're here to stay," said Sielski, echoing the addendum to his new Twain-inspired sign.

Below Twain's words hung in the cafe's entrance, Sielski and Dozmati penned a P.S. that reads: "We are going to cook our way out of this."

Kristin Palpini can be reached at kpalpini@gazettenet.com
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