Thomas Breen photo
Now-shuttered Subway: Latest Covid commercial casualty.
Store manager Khadem: “We’ve lost almost everything.”
A Subway sandwich shop that has stood at the corner of Chapel and Temple Streets for over two decades appears to have closed for good after allegedly falling over $32,000 behind on rent during the ongoing pandemic.
A paper sign with the handwritten message of “Temporarily Closed” remains taped on the front door of 926 Chapel St., just above another paper sign indicating that face coverings are required inside the local chain take-out spot.
An interview with the store’s former manager, however, as well as a new commercial eviction court case involving the 1,214 square-foot groundfloor storefront, point towards a more permanent shuttering.
“With Covid, we lost the students, and we subsequently lost the business,” former store manager and local realtor Ray Khadem told the Independent Monday afternoon.
Inside the now-empty franchise.
The Subway shop looks out over the southern end of the Green from a two-story Art Moderne commercial building that used to house Michael’s Jeweler’s in the mid-20th Century. Khadem said it has in fact been closed for roughly four months.
He and his business partner Ali Amri, who is the legal franchisee for the local outlet, had to lay off the store’s three full-time employees and five part-time employees upon closing, Khadem said.
The reason for going dark?
A precipitous drop in the number of student customers after Yale University and other nearby schools moved to remote learning towards the start of the pandemic this spring, he said.
Khadem said that he and Amri took control of the local Subway shop in 2014, and that they invested $380,000 in buying and running the franchise.
“Because of the pandemic, we’ve almost lost everything,” he said. “It’s a very tough situation. We couldn’t find any way to survive.”
A listing on the realty site LoopNet states that the first-floor retail space is now available for rent at $41 per square foot per year.
One former downtown Subway customer, Jerrard Santiago (pictured), expressed surprise and dismay upon learning that the Chapel-Temple sandwich shop likely won’t be reopening.
“I’m mad as fuck,” he said when asked how he feels about the closure. Standing in the pouring rain waiting for a car ride from a friend, he said he used to be a regular customer at the now closed store. He said his favorite sandwich was the steak and cheese.
Subway is just the latest downtown commercial space to close for good due to Covid-induced economic pressure. (Click here, here, here, and here for previous stories about recent commercial casualties in and around the Green.)
Lawsuit: No Rent Paid Since March
Subway’s corporate press contact did not respond to an email request for comment by the publication time of this article.
A commercial eviction lawsuit recently filed by the property’s landlord, Malley Properties, against Subway and Amri fleshes out the pandemic-era hard times described by Khadem. (When asked Monday, Khadem told the Independent he was not aware of the lawsuit and the allegations included in it.)
The eviction lawsuit and an Oct. 6 letter sent by the landlord’s attorney, Robert Sensale, allege that the local Subway franchise owes the landlord $32,804.66 in back rent, utilities, and taxes for the 926 Chapel St. shop.
“The Defendant has failed and refused to pay the rent, additional rent and impositions for the months of March, April, May, June, July, August, September and October 2020, due under the lease,” reads the original complaint filed on Nov. 3 and an amended complaint filed on Nov. 24.
The complaint states that Subway has occupied that downtown corner storefront since April 1996, and that its most recent lease agreement — signed this January — extended the shop’s occupancy of the space through Dec. 31, 2023, and set a monthly rent for the space of $3,540.83.
On Nov. 23, Subway attorney Kristen Boyle filed an answer and special defense in the state court case in which she sought to rebuff the commercial eviction by arguing that that the landlord violated the notice requirements set out in Subway’s lease.
Subway Real Estate LLC never physically occupied the space, she wrote, but rather subleased it to a Subway Franchisee — that is, Amri. “Based on the lease terms,” she wrote, “Defendant relied on Plaintiff to provide prompt notice of default and expressly bargained for a notice requirement in the lease to protect itself from liability for unsubstantiated monetary or non-monetary claims of Landlord should Landlord fail to adhere to the strict notice requirements.”