SERVING UP A LAWSUIT
CIPRIANI CLAN FIGHTS TOY BUILDING BIGS OVER EVICTION BID
By DAREH GREGORIAN
CIP OFF THE OL' BLOCK: Father-and-son restaurateurs Giuseppe and Arrigo Cipriani...
August 7, 2007 -- The latest creation from the embattled Ci priani family of restau rateurs involves turn ing lemons into lemonade.

The family filed a $20 million lawsuit against its landlord at the Flatiron District's Toy Building yesterday - one week after the father- and- son bosses of the luxury-dining dynasty agreed to pay $10 million to set tle tax- fraud charges.

Cipriani 200 filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court after the owners of the building at 200 Fifth Ave. - which the catering business uses for weddings and bar mitzvahs - notified it that they were terminating its lease because of the criminal case.

The notice of termination had attached to it newspaper clippings, including a Post article, recounting the guilty pleas of 75-year-old patriarch Arrigo Cipriani and his 41-year-old globe-yachting son, Giuseppe.

Arrigo pleaded guilty to felony false tax filings, while Giuseppe, who runs the company's U.S. operations, copped to misdemeanor false filing.

"This is a heartless landlord who is trying to take advantage of the guilty plea," said Cipriani lawyer Steven Wagner.

"It's reprehensible that the landlord doesn't care about the brides who have scheduled their weddings there."

The Toy Building notice seemed to contend that the family's legal problems enabled the landlords to seize the space for themselves, the suit says.

The family feels otherwise, arguing that the lease shouldn't be canceled "based upon newspaper articles or the alleged notoriety of either Giuseppe Cipriani or companies and persons not directly involved in the business operations of the catering facilities at the Toy Building."

The family's suit calls the landlord's move just the latest in the owner's efforts "to maliciously and wrongfully interfere with and to deprive Cipriani from use of the premises and the lobby."

They said the building's new owner has been trying to kick them out, as it did other tenants, for years now.

"Cipriani has invested in excess of $10 million in improvements to the premises and creating a unique, first-class catering facility," the suit says, and it has "weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events planned to take place" there through 2009.

The suit seeks $10 million in money damages, contending the building's actions have already cost them business, and $10 million in punitive damages.

A judge yesterday signed a temporary order stopping the eviction pending a hearing at the end of the month.

"We have the law on our side," Wagner said.

The Toy Building's lawyer could not be reached last night.

dareh.gregorian@nypost.com

if i had to guess (and i am! ha) i would say it sounds like the landlords wanted to take over the space and keep the bookings for themselves and keep the cash from the events.
i mean what would it take for them to honor the reservations ?? hire an outside catering firm ? big whoop


just as an example, this is pretty much what happened to peter-gatien with ClubUSA

he spent a fortune on the interiors and the rent was $100G/month (and mind you, it was just a big empty warehouse sitting there doing nothing, prior).

two year lease

and when the landlord figured out $100G was what the club was raking in, for about every 10 hours of operational time, suddenly the landlord wanted his space back (hoping all the fixtures would stay intact, naturally) or he wanted $300G a month instead.

well i guess peter-gatien showed him

gutted the whole place like a fucking dead fish. and concentrated on Tunnel instead

i think that space stayed empty for years afterward.




now imagine ? if you could captalize on the Cipriani name by keeping their space and bookings ?
sounds like it could be pretty lucrative. in THEORY-- if you weren't so silly as to think everybody (Ciprianis AND the clients) would just take that lying down.