Greek Olive, Powerbroker Spot, Closes

The doors are shut, the chairs are coming out, and a ​“for lease” sign now stands on a grassy strip of Sargent Drive — as The Greek Olive, a diner that for two decades doubled as a local political deal-making hangout, has shuttered for good.

That was the scene Friday morning at 400 Sargent Dr. — home to the La Quinta Inn hotel and, on the ground floor, the now-closed Greek Olive.

With the lights off, the booths empty, and the walls stripped bare, The Greek Olive’s longtime owner, Anthony Antonakis, stood behind the restaurant’s front counter as a solitary staff member nibbled on an egg sandwich. A father-son duo took a quick smoke break outside as they scouted out furniture to uproot from the Long Wharf diner and bring to their planned new pizza restaurant in Milford.

“It is what it is,” Antonakis said with resignation as he surveyed the vacant restaurant space that The Greek Olive has called home since 2002.

He said that the restaurant’s last day open and serving food was Oct. 30. He plans to hand the keys over to the property’s new-ish landlord and vacate the space for good on Monday.

What did The Greek Olive in? It depends on whom you ask.

During an interview Friday morning, Antonakis cited rising rent, labor shortages, increased food costs, and the long slog of trying to keep a restaurant alive during Covid as the primary reasons for The Greek Olive’s end.

In a phone interview Friday midday, Ankoor Naik — whose New Jersey-based company New Haven Lodging LLC purchased the 400 Sargent Dr. hotel-and-restaurant building in June — said that the real reasons for the restaurant’s demise was that Antonakis had fallen years behind on rent, owed the landlord roughly $200,000, and had made no good-faith efforts to get caught up.

Public documents in an ongoing commercial eviction lawsuit between Naik’s company and The Greek Olive, meanwhile, show the two sides sparring over unpaid rent dating back to August 2019, and over the alleged financial toll to the restaurant caused by the hotel’s taking in of ​“indigent recipients of public housing assistance” during the pandemic.

Mayor: PILOT Politics Over Coffee & Oatmeal

The closure of The Greek Olive marks the shuttering of an informal political institution that for two decades was a favorite spot for campaign fundraisers and political dealmaking over coffee and … oatmeal?

Mayor Justin Elicker said on Friday that that was his go-to meal whenever he attended The Greek Olive for a political meet-up.

“I typically would get oatmeal and coffee,” he said. ​“Nothing too exciting.” A trip to The Greek Olive was really about the people there.

“It’s a New Haven institution,” he continued . ​“Literally every time I went, there was a ​‘who’s who’ of New Haven, sitting down in different permutations, in different tables,” he said. ​“It was a popular venue for political fundraisers and just a fun stop to run into people.”

Click here, here, here, here, and here for previous stories in which local politics intersected with The Greek Olive.

The news of Greek Olive’s closing left State Sen. Gary Winfield wondering where he’ll be meeting up with people each morning once the pandemic passes, especially since his previous go-to spot, Clark’s on Whitney, closed in January 2020.

“I’ve lost all my spaces,” said Winfield, who held his first special-election victory party as state senator at the Greek Olive, and who could count on the wait staff to bring tabasco to go with his omelet, bacon, and home fries he always ordered at his breakfast meetings.

“It’s been a spot that’s been reliable for meetings, fundraisers. It’s kind of an institution. It’s a sad thing to see,” he said.

Elicker recalled that in early January 2020, at the very start of his first term in office, he met up for breakfast at The Greek Olive with New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney, another pol for whom the restaurant was a de facto office.

“Marty raised his idea of tiered PILOT as a way to increase funding for New Haven and many other communities,” Elicker said, referring to the state’s program for reimbursing municipalities for revenue lost on properties owned by tax-exempt colleges, hospitals, and the state.

Elicker said that meeting was an early strategizing session for how to get the state legislature to support a program that would significantly increase PILOT payments to cash-strapped cities like New Haven.

Earlier this year, those efforts paid off in a new law that increased New Haven’s annual PILOT revenue by roughly $50 million.

“It all started at The Greek Olive,” Elicker said.

Reached for comment Friday afternoon, Looney said the highway-adjacent diner hosted countless meetings over the years between himself and governors, state legislators, and other local politicos. He said he had scheduled a meeting just last week for The Greek Olive and received a call while en route that the meeting would have to take place elsewhere, because the diner had closed.

So where did that meeting end up taking place? At Cody’s diner nearby on Water Street, Looney said.

Restaurant Owner: Rent, Covid Killed Biz

Antonakis cited a constellation of reasons for The Greek Olive closing.

“After 20 years, they wanted to more than double the rent,” he said about the new landlord. (Naik said that simply wasn’t true. See more below on the landlord’s take.)

The restaurant never quite recovered from the three months it spent closed at the start of the pandemic, and from the subsequent slowdown in in-person dining throughout Covid, Antonakis continued. Food and beverage costs increased by 40 percent. He couldn’t find enough people to work at the restaurant. Fighting the ongoing eviction lawsuit was taking its toll. And at 68 years old, he was looking to slow down a little bit.

“We’re leaving,” he said. ​“We’re giving the keys back on Monday.”

He said longtime customers have been quite emotional about The Greek Olive closing. ​“We had a lot of upset people,” he said. ​“This place was the center of the community.”

While he was able to get a small Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan early on in the pandemic, he said, ​“that just prolonged” what was shaping up to be a seemingly inevitable end to the restaurant.

What’s next for Antonakis? He said he’s going to continue running a few cafeterias in the area, including at the Temple Medical Center downtown. (He said that anyone with a Greek Olive gift card can get that credit redeemed at the medical center at 60 Temple St.)

“I wish it didn’t have to go this route,” he said. But it’s time to close the restaurant down.

“It’s a terrible thing,” Arsenio Bernardo, Sr. said as he and his son, Arsenio Bernardo, Jr., took shelter from the rain Friday morning under the awning of the now-closed restaurant.

The Bernardos said they were regulars at The Greek Olive. ​“Good food, good service,” a good place to be, Bernardo, Sr. said.

He and his son said they were at the restaurant Friday because they are going to be taking some of the diner’s chairs to a pizza restaurant they plan on opening this Spring in Milford.

Landlord: No Good-Faith Effort To Pay Rent

During a phone interview Friday midday, Naik countered many of the claims made by Antonakis about what led the restaurant to close.

He took particular concern with Antonakis’s statement that the new landlord wanted to raise the restaurant’s rent from $7,000 to $18,000 per month.

“This is not Times Square. That’s insane,” Naik said. ​“That’s just not factually accurate.”

Naik said that his company acquired the hotel and restaurant property in June. He said his company inherited a restaurant that was already in default of its lease because ​“Tony has not paid rent at this location for at least one year before the pandemic started.”

Naik estimated that The Greek Olive owes roughly $200,000 in back rent and other expenses to the landlord.

He said he sat down with Antonakis soon after acquiring the property in June and tried to broker a deal that would let the restaurant stay in place. ​“I said, ​‘You need to start paying the rent,’” Naik recalled. “‘Right now you’re in default.’” (Antonakis pushed back on Naik’s version of what happened. He said when he did not agree to Naik’s numbers, the new landlord stopped talking with him. He also said he spent $50,000 to fix the property’s roof and $20,000 on HVAC.)

Naik said he recognized that restaurants and hotels were some of the hardest hit industries by the pandemic. He wanted to give The Greek Olive the opportunity to stay, but they had to make a good-faith effort at paying rent and getting caught up on back expense, he said.

“There was never an effort made to pay a single penny of rent,” he said.

Asked about the ​“for lease” sign now standing outside of The Greek Olive, Naik said his company is looking for a new restaurant ​“that’s going to be a good citizen for the community, for the hotel, for the patrons of the hotel.”

“New Haven is a pretty vibrant town,” he continued. ​“It’s a great location. Great visibility” near the highways and the train station and the water. ​“I just want a good tenant who serves the patrons well, who’s open for business.”

Based on conversations with real estate brokers in the area, he said, he thinks a fair rent for the restaurant space would be around $25 per square foot, ​“on the low end.” Since the restaurant space is around 5,700 square feet, that would put the monthly rent for the space at under $12,000.

All of that depends, however, on the state of repair of the restaurant space whenever a new occupant moves in. Naik said that Antonakis is not allowed to disassemble and give away furniture and other fixtures in the restaurant. Naik said he was concerned to hear that a group had come by on Friday with plans to pick up chairs.

Hopefully Antonakis isn’t going to ​“scorch-earth this place” on his way out, Naik said.

Eviction Lawsuit: Unpaid Rent From 2019? ​“Indigent” Hotel Guests?

An ongoing commercial eviction case against The Greek Olive in state court, meanwhile, sheds further light on the dispute between landlord and restaurant tenant.

That includes claims by the restaurant that its business was hurt by the hotel’s decision to partner with the city to take in homeless tenants during the early weeks and months of the pandemic.

The hotel’s previous owner, CPLG Portfolio East LLC, filed the lawsuit against Antonakis’s holding company New City Restaurant LLC on May 27. New Haven Lodging LLC took over the role of plaintiff in the lawsuit in June after acquiring the property from CPLG.

In that original complaint, the then-landlord stated that The Greek Olive ​“breached the lease by the nonpayment of rent for August 2019 and subsequent months.” The lawsuit states that CPLG told the restaurant ownership company in March 2020 that it was in default. And in May 2021, the landlord issued a formal notice to quit.

Antonakis’s company filed a response to the eviction complaint on Sept. 28.

In that answer document, New City Restaurant LLC’s Branford-based lawyer, Joshua Brown, offered reasons why the restaurant had fallen behind on rent. Those included pandemic-era changes to the operations of the La Quinta Inn.

The then-landlord and its successor ​“unilaterally altered the use of the adjoining hotel premises at the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic in that plaintiff ceased offering private guest accommodations and only offered accommodations to indigent recipients of public housing assistance,” Brown wrote in the restaurant’s defense.

He also wrote that, prior to that change in use, the landlord ​“failed to repair roof leaks which caused financial harm to defendant New City Restaurant, LLC d/b/a The Green Olive.”

The restaurant’s success ​“relied heavily upon private guest traffic from the adjoining hotel,” Brown continued. ​“As a result of the abrupt and utter change in the makeup of landlord’s hotel guests, the curbside appearance of the property diminished via build up of refuse and frequent appearances of police, called to respond to frequent disturbances at the plaintiff’s hotel.

‘Plaintiff’s actions and omissions, coupled with general adverse business consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic, have and continue to cripple defendant New City Restaurant, LLC’s ability to pay full rent in accordance with Lease terms.”

He wrote that the restaurant has attempted to communicate with the landlord’s representatives ​“for the purpose of renegotiating Lease terms AND paying a portion of the sums claimed owed.”

In a Sept. 30 legal reply, the landlord’s lawyer, Ryan Driscoll, wrote that New Haven Lodging LLC ​“denies each and every allegation” made by the restaurant in its Sept. 28 special defense.