The fate of 45-year-old Middle Eastern restaurant La Mediterranee was up in the air after a new controversial landlord on a buying spree bought its Upper Fillmore building, but the restaurant and owner jointly announced a four-year lease extension for the legacy business.
The story broke in April that a mystery buyer had purchased the shuttered Clay Theatre and five other buildings in a three-block span of the Upper Fillmore district, and the Chronicle connected the dots to identify the buyer as venture capitalist Neil Mehta (or rather, a web of LLCs that Mehta was financing, along with business partner Cody Allen). And those building purchases became contentious over the summer when 46-year-old sushi restaurant Ten-Ichi did not renew its lease, with Ten-Ichi owner Steve Amano telling the Chronicle, “This guy is displacing us.”
Across the street from the former Ten-Ichi building, Middle Eastern restaurant La Mediterranee also claimed Mehta’s ownership group was not allowing them to renew their lease. At a City Hall meeting in October, La Mediterranee owner Vanick Der Bedrossian said, “This is a situation we’re facing with billionaire landlords who’ve purchased so many blocks of our beloved street, and who are refusing to engage in any discussion whatsoever.”
The above Facebook post is from August, but Der Bedrossian is singing a much different tune today. In a joint Monday press release from both Der Bedrossian and Mehta’s ownership group, they announced that both parties had agreed on a lease extension that would keep La Mediterranee at its current Fillmore and Sacramento streets location “through the summer of 2028.”
“We are thrilled to be extending our lease on Fillmore Street as part of the Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project,” Der Bedrossian said in the press release. “We look forward to working with Neil Mehta and Cody Allen towards their goal of bringing more vibrancy to the neighborhood through their support of small local businesses like ours. We are glad to continue serving our faithful customers and our community, as we have done for the last 45 years.”
As you might have noticed from that quote, the web of LLCs now has the umbrella name Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project.
The release also chimes in with that project’s side of the story of the Ten-Ichi situation, claiming that Ten-Ichi turned down a lease extension “in favor of signing a termination agreement with the former landlord that included roughly $100,000 in debt forgiveness, free rent and cash payments.”
That may be, but there’s certainly a pattern of businesses in the buildings that Mehta has bought, for one reason or another, closing down or choosing not to renew their leases. The Chronicle’s report on the La Mediterranee lease renewal notes that Mediterranean restaurant Noosh has been closed since Mehta’s firm bought the building, apparel boutique Alice + Olivia is scheduled to close permanently this weekend, and a Starbucks in the 2222 Fillmore Street building that Mehta's group purchased closed permanently last month. (In fairness, a bunch of SF Starbucks have closed in recent months.)
So there’s now some stability for La Mediterranee, for the next few years, at least. But there’s still no word on the future of the shuttered Clay Theatre, San Francisco’s oldest movie theater, or whether it will still be a theater in its new incarnation.
Image: Johnson C via Yelp
