Thomas Breen photo
Scores strip club on St. John Street.
Scores lawyer Anthony DiCrosta and Clock Shop lawyer Jay Lawlor in court on Thursday.
A Mill River strip club filed for bankruptcy the afternoon before its eviction hearing, buying itself time before having to leave in order to make way for a new complex of 130 low-income apartments and artist lofts.
On Wednesday afternoon, local attorney Carl Gulliver filed for bankruptcy for his client Fuun House Productions, LLC, a holding company that owns the Scores strip club at 85 Saint John St. and that is owned by Peter Forchetti.
Gulliver submitted the Chapter 11 bankruptcy application less than 24 hours before Fuun House was set to appear in state housing court at 121 Elm St. Thursday for the latest hearing in eviction proceedings initiated by Taom Heritage New Haven LLC. Taom is the holding company for the Portland, Oregon-based developers of the Clock Shop Lofts apartment complex at 133 Hamilton St.
“Notice is hereby provided that the above captioned matter is stayed on December 12, 2018 at 3:10 p.m.,” wrote local attorney Anthony DiCrosta, who represents the strip club owners in the housing court case, in a notification of bankruptcy that he submitted to the court on Wednesday afternoon, “… insofar as the Defendant, Fuun House Production, LLC, [sp.] filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court, District of Connecticut.”
DiCrosta included in his bankruptcy notification a letter from U.S. Bankruptcy Clerk Myrna Atwater that indicates that “in most instances, the filing of the bankruptcy case automatically stays certain collection and other actions against the debtor and the debtor’s property.” That is: so long as the strip club is going through bankruptcy proceedings, the Clock Shop developers may not be able to kick the club out.
Click here to read DiCrosta’s full notification of bankruptcy filing.
On Thursday morning, Superior Court Judge John Cordani recognized the stay on the eviction case … for now.
He said he will wait to rule on the eviction proceeding until the bankruptcy is dismissed or until the stay is lifted or until the Clock Shop owners’ lawyer, Hartford-based attorney Jay Lawlor, can prove that the stay should not apply to Fuun House and Forchetti at all.
“I haven’t had an opportunity to fully evaluate the stay,” Lawlor said in court on Thursday, because he had just received it the previous evening.
He said in court that he doesn’t believe that the stay should apply to Forchetti, who is listed as an individual defendant in the eviction case. He also said that he will likely argue that the stay should not apply to the Fuun House business either. He declined to comment further on the matter after the five-minute procedural hearing.
The eviction case began back in August, when Taom Heritage filed a motion to evict Forchetti and Fuun House for refusing to leave after the expiration of their lease.
The club has been based out of the Saint John Street address under various different business names since 2002. It currently occupies roughly 14,000 square-feet of street-level commercial space on the southern side of the 130,000 square-foot Hamilton Street former industrial complex.
In 2013 the local strip club, then called the Key Club, was the scene of a shoot-out that left one woman dead and five people injured.
After three months of failing to provide a substantive response to Taom Heritage’s legal complaint, DiCrosta submitted an answer and special defense for Fuun House on Nov. 25.
In the defense document, DiCrosta argued that the strip club should not be evicted because the building’s prior owner and landlord, T.S.J., Inc, promised before they sold the property to Taom Heritage to extend Fuun House’s lease for an unidentified period of time so long as the strip club invested an unidentified amount of money into repairing and improving the property.
“In reliance thereof and to its detriment,” DiCrosta wrote, “said Defendant expended and invested substantial funds in repairing and improving the Premises thereby continuing its tenancy and occupancy of the Premises under said continued lease arrangement.”
Taom Heritage should have done its due diligence, DiCrosta argued, and learned about this oral lease extension agreement.
“The time period of said promised continued lease period of time following the end of the written lease between said Defendant and said T.S.J., Inc. has yet to expire,” he wrote.
DiCrosta also argued that Taom Heritage “has engaged in self help tactics and methods” by denying Scores access to 30 on-site parking spaces in the Hamilton Street complex’s court yard due to extensive construction and excavation work that the plaintiff is doing to prepare for the development of the Clock Shop Lofts.
“The Plaintiff’s action in said taking of the parking lot was unfair, unjustified, unconscionable, and as such ought to negate its claims asserted in this summary process action which have been rendered inequitable due to said self-help actions by the Plaintiff.”
The Clock Shop Lofts site, viewed from Hamilton Street.
The very next day, Lawlor submitted a response to the court in which he and Taom Heritage denied “each and every allegation contained in the Special Defenses asserted by the Defendants.”
On Dec. 11, Lawlor submitted a pretrial memorandum in which he elaborated on the plaintiff’s rejection of Fuun House’s claims.
Fuun House’s last lease with TSJ expired on March 31, 2017, Lawlor wrote. As for the alleged oral extension of the lease, Lawlor said, that almost certainly never happened.
“It is anticipated that the principals of TSJ (each of whom will be under subpoena) will testify that no such agreement was ever made,” Lawlor wrote.
Even if the old owners do not testify or are not credible, he continued, the alleged agreement to extend the lease is not binding on Taom Heritage because the prior lease required changes be made in writing, and because “it would amount to an unrecorded lease of more than a year,” thereby violating state statute.
As for the alleged blocking of the courtyard parking spaces, Lawlor wrote that Taom Heritage has “undertaken extensive environmental abatement and remediation activities in that area of the Property. As a result, Plaintiff has needed to close off public access to the courtyard.”
Crosskey Architects.
Rendering of future Clock Shop Lofts.
Be that as it may, Lawlor wrote, DiCrosta conveniently neglected to include in his allegations that the Clock Shop owners had spoken with Forchetti and had come to an explicit agreement around closing off the courtyard for construction activities. “Email correspondence confirms and corroborates the foregoing,” he wrote. That agreement besides, Lawlor said that the parking area-related allegations are inconsequential because they are predicated on a prior lease agreement that the new owners believe is invalid.
In court on Thursday, Lawlor acceded to letting the eviction stay be put in place for now, at least until he has more than half-a-day to assess the validity of the bankruptcy-related motion. “I don’t want to be found in contempt of court,” he told Cordani. But, he said, he will likely come back before the court soon to argue against the temporary stay.