SL Green wins $13.5M back rent from Rosie O’Grady’s

Mike Carty, the owner of Rosie O’Grady’s, might need to drown out the result of a dispute with his former landlord with a pint of Guinness. Maybe two.

SL Green has asked a court to confirm an arbitration award of nearly $13.5 million for back rent and property taxes the popular restaurant owes at its former home, 800 Seventh Avenue. The landlord’s filing pulls back the curtains on a dispute that has been playing out since the start of the pandemic.

Rosie O’Grady’s rent under a 2017 agreement was about $3.35 million a year when the beloved Irish restaurant, which had been at the Theater District site since 1980, closed on March 15, 2020, a casualty of Covid.

It requested an adjustment and stopped paying rent on May 1, 2020, according to SL Green. The tourist destination reopened briefly that November and December, and then operated from May 2021 until closing on July 1, 2023.

The business made a partial rent payment of $2.1 million while continuing to negotiate with SL Green for a reduction, but never came to terms and surrendered the space in mid-July.

Under the sublease by which Rosie O’Grady’s was using the space, the dispute went to binding arbitration. The tenant argued that the force majeure clause of its lease applied to the pandemic closing and required a rent adjustment, but a panel of arbitrators ruled in 2021 that the clause did not apply.

Rosie O’Grady’s claimed in December 2020 that SL Green agreed to modify the terms of the sublease, but SL Green said the terms of the conditional agreement were not met.

SL Green’s petition claims the restaurant is also on the hook for rent and real estate taxes through the expiration of the sublease in 2048, but does not ask the court to issue a judgment for that money, which would be close to $100 million. It does, however, ask for 9 percent interest on the $13.5 million in arrears.

Rosie O’Grady’s and SL Green did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

When Rosie O’Grady’s shuttered last year, the Irish press and other media posted mournful stories, with no less than Neil Diamond telling Fox 5 NY that the closure “broke my heart.”

The heartbreak was temporary, though: Rosie O’Grady’s picked up the barstools and opened anew at 148 West 51st Street. It replaced another famed restaurant in Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which closed the location last April after deciding not to renew its lease, according to Crain’s.

The 28,000-square-foot space at 800 Seventh Avenue at West 52nd Street is now listed for lease or sale as a “full building opportunity” and “perfect for a high-volume restaurant.”

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