Bayside alleges four stores haven’t paid rent, sues to evict Claire’s and Envy

Lawsuits shed light on rents at the Miami bayfront mall

Bayside Marketplace (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Bayside Marketplace (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The owner of Bayside Marketplace filed four separate lawsuits against Claire’s and three other retailers, alleging unpaid rent. In some cases, it is seeking to evict the tenants.

Bayside Marketplace LLC wants to evict Claire’s and Envy from the waterfront mall at 401 Biscayne Boulevard. It’s also suing Splash Perfumes and I Luv Miami for allegedly not paying rent. A spokesperson for the mall declined to comment.

Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., which bought General Growth Partners’ 49 percent stake in the mall’s ground lease in late 2014, also took over management of Bayside in January 2016. Ashkenazy leases the bayside land from the city of Miami.

Claire’s signed a lease for 1,258 square feet in September 2007, according to the suit. A holdover notice dated Dec. 15 shows Bayside demanded rent equal to 150 percent of Claire’s rent for not vacating the space by the lease end date of Jan. 31, 2017.

Claire’s, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy less than a week after Bayside filed its lawsuit, declined to comment on the litigation. Court records show Claire’s case was placed on an inactive status due to the bankruptcy filing.

Envy signed a 10-year lease for 1,827 square feet at Bayside in November 2015, according to a separate lawsuit filed in March. The lease was set to begin a year later, with annual rents totaling $157,122 for the first year, $161,836 the second year, and up to $205,000 a year by 2024.

A letter dated Jan. 29 shows Bayside sent a default notice to Envy, alleging Envy Holding Inc. failed to deliver a statement of monthly sales since January 2017, in addition to allegedly not paying its rent for space #1350. The tenant owed Bayside more than $3,500 as of that date, according to the letter.

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Bayside is also suing Splash Perfumes and I Luv Miami. The latter entered into a lease in May 2015 with Bayside for unit #1225, a 948-square-foot space. Annual rent for the first year totaled just under $100,000, increased to $102,526 the following year, and would increase to $112,000 in 2019, the year the lease expires.

Splash Perfumes signed a lease with Bayside in December 2010 for 565 square feet that expired March 31, according to the agreement. Rents began in 2012 at $110,740 a year and increased to about $140,000 for the last year of the lease.

Each lease agreement also includes a percentage of sales owed to Bayside, ranging from 6 percent to 10 percent. For Splash Perfumes, it was 7 percent based on sales of $1.3 million a year in 2012 up to $1.6 million in 2017.

The lawsuits, all filed on March 14, are not the first time Bayside sues its tenants. Court filings show Bayside’s ownership was previously involved in a legal war with a small group of tenants evicted from the mall. Between September 2016 and September 2017, Bayside Marketplace filed eviction lawsuits against 15 tenants.

Last year, in separate counterclaims and responses to eviction lawsuits filed by Bayside Marketplace LLC, two retailers and two restaurant operators accused the mall’s ownership of fraud, breach of contract and fraudulent inducement.

In 2016, GGP and Ashkenazy retained Zyscovich Architects to design a major renovation of Bayside Marketplace, which has not moved forward since then.