Bluffview Shopping Center Sues Erstwhile Tenant
Way out on the very southwestern tip of our coverage area, on Northwest Highway just east of its intersection with Lemmon Avenue, there is a mixed-use, residential/retail development I’ve been curious about for a long time, mainly because, well, it’s empty.
Not quite empty–a State Farm agent has an office upstairs, there is a place called DFW MRI tucked away in a corner, and the stalwart Bugatti Ristorante tucked into another corner–but the vast, vast majority of the 43,000-square-foot retail and office space is vacant.
It’s certainly emptier than it was in November, when Eco Cleaners, which has since moved to Hillcrest Crossing, was starting to set up shop. But then, according to a lawsuit filed by property owner Archstone Bluffview LP (a subsidiary of Archstone-Smith, which was taken over by Lehman Brothers in 2007), the owners skipped out on their lease.
According to the suit, filed last week in county district court, Pushpa and Chatankumar Patel signed a lease on April 13, 2009. But they never opened, racked up quite a bit in unpaid rent, and failed to maintain the property, which is why they were locked out of the space in December. All this even after Archstone had paid for that Eco Cleaners sign for them.
The suit seeks more than $175,000 in unpaid rent between when the lease was signed in April and its expiration five years later, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.
I’ll link to a digital copy of the suit when I can get one.
