Fears of Rent Hikes on Swarthmore

Bob Benton, who has been in business on Swarthmore for 23 years, was hard at work this week, ‘still crunching the numbers,’ he said. Owner of a sporting goods store at the corner of Swarthmore and Monument, and a former Chamber of Commerce president, Benton is still awaiting a resolution of his lease negotiations, which have been going on since November. Benton told the Palisadian-Post Tuesday that, initially, the landlord offered him a five-year lease, which would see his rent jump from $2.50 to $4.50 a square foot per month. After Palisades Partners rejected his counterproposal in early March, he told the Post: ‘If we can’t resolve this, somehow, and I can’t find another location in the Palisades, I guess I will go out of business. I’m still weighing all my options. We’re working the numbers as best we can.’ Yesterday, a trustee for Palisades Partners told the Post that they are still willing to work with Benton to reach an agreement. Benton was the first Swarthmore merchant to be offered a new lease by trustees Bob Stelzl, John Wilson and John Watkins, the three representatives from Palisades Partners, a multi-family trust that owns 18 of the 22 retail and commercial properties on the 1000 block of Swarthmore. On Monday, March 14, the three men met with Katie O’Laughlin of Village Books, kids’ clothier Ivy Greene, and members of the McCrory-Irwin family, owners of Michelle International and Palisades Beauty Supply, to present new five-year leases which include rent increases. Meetings with the remaining Swarthmore merchants, some of which were scheduled for this week, were unexpectedly canceled. Other businesses that will be affected by the proposed rent increases include Mort’s Deli, Palisades Playthings, The Prince’s Table, Roy Robbins, Baskin-Robbins, Wells Fargo and three restaurants’Dante’s, Terri’s and a la Tarte. Bert Yellen, who has owned a la Tarte with his wife Bonnie for eight years, feels the landlord ‘has the right to increase the rent to whatever they want,’ but ‘how much more do they think I can charge for my croissants? Going from $2.25 to $2.35 is already a lot, but it will not pay for the increases I hear they are proposing. While we are prepared to spend $50,000 of our own money to improve our restaurant’we want to put in a second bathroom and get a beer and wine license’we are not prepared to spend it without a lease.’ Terri Festa, who owns a second Terri’s restaurant in Agoura Hills, where she recently moved, said she is ‘frightened’ and ‘saddened’ by what is going on on Swarthmore. ‘I’ve been in business here for 10 years. The landlord called me about six weeks ago and asked if I intended to stay. I told him yes. While every couple of months I have people interested in buying my business, I have no intention of selling. I just hope all of this can be resolved amicably.’ Tonight at 7 p.m. in the branch library on Alma Real, the Palisades Community Council will discuss whether the board should schedule a special April meeting to consider ‘the impending crisis regarding Swarthmore merchants,’ according to Council Chairman Norman Kulla. (Editor’s note: Owners of the new Boca Woman store at 1022 Swarthmore, which opened last November in the former Video 2010 space, have a five-year lease with Palisades Partners. The unaffected businesses on Swarthmore include Whispers, Solis Salon, Fernworks and Paliskate.)