A landlord is suing a restaurant owner and her mother after they decided to close their Van Ness Avenue restaurant in December due to the negative impacts that the woefully delayed Van Ness Improvement Project had on the business. And the mother is a survivor of a WWII Japanese-American internment camp.
Masaye Waugh, owner of Bootleg Bar & Kitchen, tells KPIX/CBS SF that months of annoying construction, and the removal of half the sidewalk outside her business, meant for untold lost revenue last year. She previously went on TV to tell the station of her business's troubles back in October, and after she shuttered the restaurant two months later and tried to get out of her lease a year and a half early, her landlord decided to sue.
As KPIX reports, the landlord at the building, 2360 Van Ness, is Neveo Mosser, the CEO of Mosser Companies, and Mosser indicated that the parties are in negotiations to settle the suit.
The construction on Van Ness Ave. was supposed to be finished this year, but contractors kept hitting snags. Now, the SFMTA says it's delayed again, meaning more pain for the street's business owners. https://t.co/4SQBOSrYjQ
— KPIX 5 (@KPIXtv) May 2, 2019
But attorney for Waugh Mark Rennie says that including Waugh's mother in the suit (Waugh's mother, Isami Arifuku, served as guarantor for the lease) is an insult. "This is a woman who was in a Japanese internment camp,” Rennie tells KPIX. “It’s like, you start your life like that and end your life with bill collectors chasing you, trying to take your house away? We are better than that as a city. San Francisco is better than that."
Meanwhile, construction of what was supposed to just be a new median a bus rapid transit lane, drags on with no end in sight.
