FORT PIERCE \u2013 The deal for a new operator for a downtown waterfront restaurant appears to have fallen through, leaving the Fort Pierce City Commission to determine whether it will waive nearly $334,000 of unpaid rent and property taxes or take legal action to recoup it.<\/p>\n
Commissioners must decide their next step at Monday\u2019s 9 a.m. meeting, after receiving a memo saying \u201cthe proposed lease assignment with an interested party now appears unlikely to proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n
What appeared to be a promising solution in September, now puts the city back to square one with current leaseholder Winking Starfish LLC, of St. Petersburg, after it suddenly closed down the restaurant in February, after making an unsuccessful appeal for the city to forego multiple months of rent payments.<\/p>\n
In September, commissioners decided to give the current tenant another month to wrap up a lease assignment to a new operator. At that time, City Manager Richard Chess did not name the possible new leaseholder, but said \u201cthey have experience in this particular business.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city said then it needed more information from the prospect and additional time to analyze their financial information before a final recommendation could be made.<\/p>\n
The agenda memo for Monday does not indicate why the prospect is no longer being considered.<\/p>\n
The lease called for an initial 20-year term, with two, five-year renewals available. The city awarded the lease for the city-owned site in December 2018, and the tenant built a new 7,200-square-foot facility there in 2020.<\/p>\n
Under terms of the lease, the city says it retains ownership of the building located on its land at 5 Avenue A if the lease is broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cStaff seeks Commission direction on how to address the outstanding balance owed by the current tenant, whether to continue pursuing an assignment, and whether to initiate termination of the lease and prepare a Request for Proposals (RFP) for future operation of the site,\u201d the agenda memo states.<\/p>\n
As of Oct. 1, city officials say Winking Starfish has not paid monthly rent to the city for the past year. That amounts to $192,019.77 in uncollected rent and another $9,600.99 in late fees.<\/p>\n
In addition, the city has paid the last three years of property taxes that were supposed to be the tenant\u2019s responsibility. That totals $132,299.95 and 2026 property taxes will be due soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of Oct. 12, 2026, the current tenant, Winking Starfish, LLC, holds an outstanding balance totaling approximately $333,942.71,\u201d the city memo states. \u201cStaff requires direction on whether to pursue collection of this amount or waive it. Staff also requests guidance on next steps related to the lease,\u201d<\/p>\n
Those steps could include:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Continuing assignment efforts or initiating termination of the existing lease.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Proceeding to issue a new RFP for future operation of Crabby\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Deciding whether to pursue recovering the money the city is owed or waiving the amount.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE \u2013 The deal for a new operator for a downtown waterfront restaurant appears to have fallen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172,563],"class_list":["post-422415","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\/422415","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=422415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}