Restaurant still trading despite expired lease

KNYSNA NEWS - While the municipality has had to resort to court action to not only force the controversial Senza Restaurant to close up shop after failing to stop trading when its lease came to an end last year, but to also force owners to pay close to R7-million in unpaid rent and other municipal arrear accounts, the owners are adamant that the municipality could have avoided the almost decade-long saga.

Part-owner Roland Walker said this week that “if the municipality had shown good faith and integrity” the saga could have been avoided without “wasting taxpayers' money”.

There have been years of drama between owners of the restaurant, formerly Cornuti Ristorante, and the municipality after they started leasing the prominent property overlooking the Knysna Heads from the municipality in April 2008. This has led to millions in outstanding rental, electricity, water, rates and other services. By the time of going to print this amounted to more than R6.9-million.

The owners, however, claimed that the payments were withheld after the municipality allegedly gave the green light for upgrades to the tune of R2.5-million – about R1.5-million more than what was originally agreed upon. This was however never put in writing. Owners also claimed that initial costs of the upgrade, which needed to be done when they “moved in”, would have been R1-million, but that the condition of the floors, roof and other structural work pushed up costs dramatically.

This led to lengthy litigation which is still ongoing.

The lease agreement, meanwhile, came to an end on December 31, 2016 and during a special council meeting on September 29, 2016 council resolved not to extend the agreement beyond the lease term.

Still trading
Despite this, the restaurant has been trading continuously, which led to court action. “The lease came to an end and they did not vacate. We then obtained an order for eviction. In terms of the order they must vacate by May 1, 2017.”

Walker did not answer questions about his plans come May 1, but should he not close up shop the sheriff of the court – according to the eviction order signed on March 8, 2017 – would evict them.

“All I can say is that if the municipality had shown good faith and integrity and had reimbursed me like they said they would for the millions of extras I put into their property, the taxpayers and I would not have had to waste hundreds of thousands of rands on legal fees for a matter that could have been mediated and settled quite easily,” Walker said referring to the ongoing litigation.

About recouping the millions in outstanding rental and services, municipal spokesperson Fran Kirsten said, “There is still an ongoing court battle for the arrear rentals.”

Walker did not answer questions about whether he planned to pay the money back.

Kirsten said that the municipality had implemented and enforced stricter revenue collection as well as rewritten its lease agreements to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future.

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