The fight for our hard work
Mind games are never fun, they're confusing, mentally & emotionally draining and overall a waste of time. Especially when it's involving a 14 year investment and lifestyle topic.
After recieving our notice to vacate in early June, we accepted the fact that we're leaving the building and we began making other arrangements.
What started off as a demand with compliance, turned into harassments, threats and lies. In the original letter we received, we were told we had until the 30th to vacate, giving us time to properly move out, but then that was followed up by multiple emails, phone calls and messages demanding money and signatures on a "Lease termination" even though they already terminated our lease.
Super fishy how badly they want our signature, in fact there's a lot more to the story that meets the eye. See, we were not late on rent, we were all caught up, conducting business as usual.
In May, things started to change, they:
1) Doubled our rent overnight without notice
2) Refused to renew our lease (for 7 months, disregarding our desire and messages to sign a new one)
3) Hit us with $20,000 of common area maintenance escalation from a year previous (that they “forgot” to collect)
Despite the bullshit, we were still paying them because of our dedication to the business, we made incremental payments whenever we could so our now doubled rent didnt pile up on us, but we didnt want to pay the $20k maintenance balance without proof that $20k worth of maintenance was done and we definitely didn’t see any done.
If you know us, if you visit the building, you know that WE ARE the ones who do the maintenance around there. So without proof or physical changes to the property, we can't justify paying that much and quite frankly, we don't just have an extra $20k laying around. Mind you, all of us tenants pay monthly for maintenance regardless, it is a set agreed upon number, that's the same amount every month, even though they never actually maintain the property or make improvements.
So we inquired about a payment plan with agreeable terms for the "maintenance costs" that they "forgot" to collect. But they never responded and soon after sent us the letter to vacate the building. After sleepless nights of trying to decide what to do because we have so much invested, we decided we will just leave, the 30th of June will be our last day at 5950 w McDowell rd.
But the harassment didn't stop, we continued to receive emails and calls, demanding money and a signature on a contract "by tonight" or they will lock us out and seize our personal property by morning. Mind you, they said "by tonight" multiple times. The date keeps on changing, their money amount keeps on changing and their threats keep on changing.
As much as we want to fight for our rights. it's not worth risking our equipment, personal property or inventory, so we've decided to close doors and start our journey somewhere else.
This all happened soon after the property manager visited Herb n grinds and raved about the place. He loved the patio and praised us for the improvements that we made, and they even said since Herb n Legend is the one doing the maintenance, that if we get a maintenance LLC, they will contract us for on-site maintenance since we are the ones who do it anyways. (We actually did go through and create the maintenance LLC just for them to ignore us when we inquired about setting up the contract)
Funny how it all happened after they saw how great we did on improving the space, could it be that they realized if they seize our property and improvements they can charge a different tenant much more? Or did they get the bright idea to start their own maintenance company, so they can up-charge their tenants on maintenance services and be able to show financial statements of funds going out for "maintenance and service" to a company that they actually own too?
There are so many what ifs, and so many questions and although we don't know what kind of scam they're pulling, we know that we don't have the mental and emotional capacity to play these games anymore.
We love you all so much and it breaks our heart, but there is something ugly going on with this property management company and we hope and pray that our fellow business neighbors at 5950 w McDowell rd. Are able to fight back and don't succumb to their bullshit and made up fees and balances.
We will see you all soon at the new location, please subscribe to our mailing list so you can be updated on everything!