FORT PIERCE\u2013The tenant that shut down operations at Crabby\u2019s for financial reasons in February got its deadline for finding a successor extended for a second time Monday night.<\/p>\n
But Winking Starfish LLC, the current struggling leaseholder, and Fort Pierce city officials are expressing confidence that a new operator can be named in 30 days.<\/p>\n
City Manager Richard Chess did not name the possible new leaseholder, but said \u201cthey have experience in this particular business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials said they need more information from the prospect and additional time to analyze their financials.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo they have the assets to capitalize this undertaking?\u201d District 1 Commissioner Curtis Johnson Jr. asked.<\/p>\n
And whether the city will demand recouping $317,000 of unpaid rent and property taxes from either the current or prospective leaseholder now seems unclear.<\/p>\n
A letter earlier this year from Winking Starfish said the city will exercise final approval of any new operator and that the successor must pay \u201cany outstanding monetary obligations under the lease to the City of Fort Pierce.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the current lease says the city now owns the $4 million building that the St. Petersburg limited liability corporation paid for and the prospective new operator has proposed paying for some renovations and the addition of a tiki bar on the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is this $3 million building the city is getting and the (prospective) new leaseholder is planning capital improvements that will outpace the $300,000 owed to the city,\u201d said District 2 Commissioner Chris Dzadovsky,<\/p>\n
The original lease 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
Crabby\u2019s closed in February after it failed to pay five months of rent and several years of property taxes that the city initially paid but failed to bill the operator.<\/p>\n
The restaurant had unsuccessfully requested the city forgive those arrearages, plus an additional 18 months of future lease payments, to allow it to \u201cstabilize\u201d its finances. Shortly after that denial, Crabby\u2019s announced on Facebook that it was closing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE\u2013The tenant that shut down operations at Crabby\u2019s for financial reasons in February got its deadline for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172,563],"class_list":["post-395119","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\/395119","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=395119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}