FORT PIERCE \u2013 The Fort City Commission Monday granted the current leaseholder of the now-defunct Crabby\u2019s restaurant\/bar an additional 60 days to find someone to take over the operating lease.<\/p>\n
Shyanne Harnage, city director of community and economic development, said Winking Starfish LLC, of St. Petersburg, the current leaseholder, has given the city \u201cpreliminary information about a potential assignee.\u201d<\/p>\n
No name was disclosed Monday night.<\/p>\n
Harnage recommended the 60-day extension, saying the city will use the time to \u201cvet\u201d a potential new operator.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this group turns out not to work, we will be back to you sooner,\u201d she told commissioners.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s action sidesteps, at least temporarily, legal action by the city to collect months of unpaid rent, plus reimbursement for several years of property taxes paid by the city.<\/p>\n
Monday was the original deadline the city had given to Crabby\u2019s operator, Winking Starfish LLC, to find an acceptable concern to take over the long-term lease or face legal action to terminate the agreement.<\/p>\n
The commission unanimously voted Monday for the additional 60-day extension.<\/p>\n
The city signed the original, 20-year lease with Winking Starfish for the waterfront property at 2 Avenue A in 2018. Terms had included the possibility of an additional two, five-year renewals. That company invested $4 million to construct a new, two-story restaurant\/bar on the downtown waterfront property. Under the lease terms, the city will own the building if the lease is terminated.<\/p>\n
The original terms said Crabby\u2019s would pay the city a base annual rent of $159,5582, increasing 2 percent in each successive year. In addition, the city would receive 2 percent of food sales over $2.5 million; 7 percent of alcohol sales exceeding the first $600,000; and 5 percent of ice cream sales over the initial $100,000.<\/p>\n
The lease required the tenant to pay for property taxes, insurance, utilities and maintenance.<\/p>\n
City officials have not said whether Fort Pierce has.received any rent or tax payments from Winking Starfish LLC since the business shut down in February.<\/p>\n
Officials said they first learned that the business was closing from a social media post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE \u2013 The Fort City Commission Monday granted the current leaseholder of the now-defunct Crabby\u2019s restaurant\/bar an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172,563],"class_list":["post-332764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-st_lucie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}