City seeks to block Sharky's expansion

By PAUL QUINLAN

 

 

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VENICE -- The city will challenge a lease agreement that would allow Sharky's on the Pier, Venice's popular beachfront restaurant, lucrative expansion rights as the city now begins to develop a park on adjacent property.

The City Council on Tuesday approved spending more than $2 million to build a parking lot and pavilion on an unused gravel lot just north of the restaurant.

But the project could set in motion a deal struck in 2000 between the owners of Sharky's and the city, in which the restaurant would pay half the costs of the parking lot expansion in exchange for the right to expand its restaurant operations. Sharky's has sought to add hundreds of seats to its beachside restaurant-bar.

The City Council now opposes allowing Sharky's to expand as part of the parking lot project, without a renegotiation of its lease.

City leaders blasted the 2000 agreement as a sweetheart deal that the restaurant struck with a former city administration, without requiring that the restaurant, in turn, pay any significantly larger share of its profits to the city.

"The bottom line is: it's a very bad lease," said City Councilman John Moore, a former judge, who persuaded the council to seek a "declaratory judgement" in circuit court against the 2000 contract.

"It's a thorn in our side, and it's just going to get worse," Moore said.

The 40-year lease extension signed with Sharky's in 2000 and on file at the city includes blank spaces within clauses covering key points -- such as the amount Sharky's should pay the city.

"This is an agreement where the material terms of the lease are left blank," Moore said.

City officials knew that building the parking lot to the north of Sharky's could open questions about the contract. But they said the city had no choice, because under a permit approved by the state Venice has only until May 2007 to complete the job. The state "would not look unfavorably" on another extension. The City Council on Tuesday, simultaneously approving a $2.1 million construction contract with John F. Swift, Inc.

Meanwhile, the city voted to return to the negotiating table with Sharky's owners, hoping that they can avoid a showdown in circuit court by agreeing to to recast the 2000 agreement in terms that are clear and agreeable to both the city and the restaurateurs.

Discussions of the lease included much finger-pointing, not only to past city administrations for authorizing  the deal but also at the current city attorney, Bob Anderson. Moore recommended that the city hire an outside attorney to challenge the 2000 lease, pointing out that Anderson represented the city when the current contract was approved.

"You were so much a part of this," Moore said, that "with all do respect...I think we ought to explore the possibility of outside council."

Anderson agreed, though he defended himself as stating on the record that had opposed the deal at the time. Mayor Dean Calamaras agreed, saying Anderson was only "peripherally involved."

"He wasn't involved in the nuts and bolts of this lease on a day to day basis," Calamaras said.

City records show that gross sales at Sharky's -- a private restaurant that rents city property -- grew 220 percent from 1990 to 2002, rising from $1.5 to $4.8 million and making it the largest grossing restaurant in the Venice area.

Sharky's first partnered with the city in 1986.