After the longest-operating cafe in L.A. County introduced in late December that it could shut down after 139 years, clients of the Unique Saugus Cafe started shopping for up its branded hats, T-shirts, mugs and different merchandise.
When the merch offered out, some took to filching from the tables: glassware, salt and pepper shakers, and even utensils.
To Jessie Mercado, 31, and her father, Alfredo — who has owned the beloved cafe in Santa Clarita for 30 years — it was amusing and candy that many held the institution so near their hearts that they needed to take items of it residence with them.
An indication posted to the Saugus Superette, the liquor retailer adjoining the Unique Saugus Cafe, guarantees the reopening of the restaurant.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Occasions )
However a property supervisor who took over dealing with their lease in current months noticed it otherwise. He left an offended voicemail for her 59-year-old father, reviewed by The Occasions, telling him to “get the Godd— s— again,” or he would sue.
Prospects of the Unique Saugus Cafe didn’t have lengthy to mourn the lack of the landmark. The restaurant, which closed on Jan. 4, has already reopened underneath new administration. In the meantime, behind the scenes, a dispute over the cafe’s possession has boiled over right into a lawsuit because the Mercados insist that they had been pushed out.
For many years, Mercado’s father mentioned he had a pleasant relationship and verbal lease settlement with the property proprietor, Hank Arklin Sr., a former state Meeting member who owned a number of industrial areas within the space.
However difficulties arose after Arklin died on the age of 97 in August, the Mercados mentioned, they usually started coping with Larry Goodman, who handles properties on behalf of the Arklin household’s firm, North Valley Development.
The Mercados alleged in a lawsuit filed final week that Goodman, North Valley Development and Arklin’s spouse, Louise, had handled the household poorly, tainted the model, ignored their authorized declare to the enterprise and tools so they might abandon the restaurant.
Regardless of the continued authorized problem, the cafe reopened on Monday at 5 a.m. underneath new proprietor Eduardo Reyna and with a barely totally different identify: Saugus Restaurant. A lot of the furnishings seems to have remained the identical, together with menu objects and even a number of the staff.
Individuals wait in line to eat on the Unique Saugus Cafe throughout what was regarded as its final day of enterprise after practically 140 years in Saugus.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Occasions)
“Individuals suppose we lied to them [about shutting down]. That it was a publicity entrance. I need them to know we had been scammed into this,” Mercado mentioned. “It’s unhappy it needed to go down this manner.”
Steffanie Stelnick, an lawyer representing the Mercados, mentioned that for the brand new proprietor and landlord “to open up and run [the cafe] in the identical location, representing it as the identical enterprise with out buying it or with out permission” is successfully stealing.
Stelnick mentioned she deliberate to amend the lawsuit to incorporate Reyna.
Reyna didn’t reply to a cellphone name request for remark.
Goodman didn’t reply to a number of cellphone calls and messages from The Occasions requesting remark. Louise Arklin additionally didn’t reply to requests for remark.
However earlier this month in an interview with the Santa Clarita Valley information outlet the Sign, Goodman disputed that the Mercado household owned the enterprise and mentioned the daddy had wavered about preserving the restaurant going.
“They don’t don’t have anything to promote. I personal every part,” Goodman mentioned. “We personal the cafe. We personal the constructing. The range. The dishes. The forks. We personal every part in there.”
The cafe, in a protracted, slim constructing, was beloved by Santa Clarita residents and was regionally famend for its long-running operation, its cameos in varied movies and tv reveals, and visits by Hollywood stars reminiscent of Frank Sinatra and John Wayne.
Mercado mentioned her household hadn’t needed to shut. They needed to proceed supporting the 17 staff who labored there. However, she mentioned, they entertained the opportunity of promoting the enterprise if the precise provide got here alongside. Dealings with Goodman, nevertheless, had felt hostile and left her father feeling “humiliated” and like they’d no possibility however to depart.
An indication on the door posted in late December introduced the cafe’s closure, noting that the “determination was not made frivolously.”
On its final day of operation, the road stretched down the block. Amongst clients saying their goodbyes was Charlane Glover, who shared numerous Sunday morning breakfasts along with her husband there earlier than his dying.
“I can’t think about it being gone,” mentioned Glover, who waited for over an hour for a desk for her and her granddaughter. “We’re shedding all of our historical past.”
Mercado’s father received a shock the subsequent morning, his daughter mentioned, when he arrived to pack up solely to seek out the locks had been modified and an indication posted saying the cafe could be “reopening underneath new possession quickly!”
Alfredo Mercado had began on the restaurant busing tables and washing dishes, she mentioned, working his means up the ladder to bartender and prepare dinner positions to ultimately purchase possession of the cafe and its identify in 1998. Her father is the only real identify listed on the LLC.
Stelnick, the household’s lawyer, wrote in a Jan. 6 cease-and-desist letter to Goodman that he made a “wrongful try” to take her shopper’s enterprise and that his alleged “ongoing threats and pressure have already prompted vital injury.”
The Mercados filed swimsuit Jan. 14 in Los Angeles County Superior Court docket and are pursuing damages — together with the taking of their private property — of not less than $500,000.
The grievance alleges that, in August after Arklin’s dying, Goodman pressured Mercado’s father to signal a lease that acknowledged that, along with the premises, all method of home equipment and utensils had been underneath the purview of the rental settlement — together with “kitchen tools, cubicles, counters, stools, chairs, registers, utensils, pots, plates, cutlery, and different cooking & mechanical techniques” — regardless that the Mercados had bought and maintained these objects, the lawsuit argued. Goodman, the lawsuit alleged, had indicated the Mercados wouldn’t be capable of stay on the property as tenants if they didn’t signal.
On the finish of August, the Arklin household’s firm, North Valley Development, submitted trademark purposes for the names “Saugus Café,” “The Unique Saugus Café” and “Saugus Café1.”
The lawsuit mentioned the submitting of purposes confirmed the property proprietor was pursuing a “confusingly related” identify and that infringement on the Mercados’ enterprise was thus “willful, deliberate, and malicious.”
Mercado mentioned her father hadn’t acted sooner as a result of he didn’t perceive the extent of his declare over the enterprise.
“We simply didn’t know our rights,” Mercado mentioned.
Workers photographer Juliana Yamada contributed to this report.
