Counterpart Vegan Restaurant earlier this week closed its Echo Park doors, hinting at a possible dispute with its landlord as the leading factor in permanently go dark. At the time of the closure announcement, Owners Joshua Pourgol and Chef Mimi Williams did not explicitly disclose the reason for closing.
Pourgol, when reached by What Now Los Angeles (WNLA) for comment late Friday, penned in an email the series of events this year that culminated in the closure. WNLA published Pourgol’s comments in their entirety below. It should be noted that Counterpart’s landlord — Karl Slovin — was also given an opportunity to respond, but did not.
Pourgol is the founder of Blurred Limes Hospitality and has owned and operated many Los Angeles hospitality concepts over the years. The restaurateur — typically acting behind the scenes — plans on reopening Counterpart in 2021 in a new Echo Park home and this week launched a GoFundMe to support the effort.
Prior to us signing our lease, we negotiated heavily and agreed on the scope of work we’d perform on the space. We moved forward exactly as agreed on our end. We had three months of free rent. During the free rent period, the landlord issued default notices for missed rent payments. We were forced to prove that we had agreed to free rent. Once we opened, the landlord’s management team showed up often to inspect and sent lists of default notices on items that were either A — agreed to in our lease negotiations, or B — work that landlord had performed.
Each time, we had to go head to head with the landlord’s management team while they accused us of all kinds of things. Each time, I had to forward emails between me and their lawyer where we had agreed to those items. The landlord also accused us of operating without a health permit because he did not understand that, under a transfer of ownership in a restaurant, it takes anywhere from one to three months for the health dept to show up to do its initial inspection and provide a letter grade.
Each of these times that we had to go head to head, the landlord’s management team became increasingly aggravated, and this ultimately led to a relationship where the landlord refused to cooperate with us on any of our needs. Landlord’s management team would not answer emails or get back to us on important items for months at a time but would show up in a matter of minutes when it came to enforcing any one of their supposed rules. For example, when we were limited to outdoor dining only and hung up string lights outside because the building has almost no exterior lighting, the landlord sent notice within 30 minutes requiring us to remove lighting. Landlord also threw away our dirty towel bins from the building’s trash enclosure area multiple times. The landlord forced us to remove outdoor heaters from our outdoor space as well. You try operating a restaurant without lights or exterior heaters.
Ultimately, we could not operate because the space did not have proper ventilation for a restaurant operation and because we needed a liquor license to supplement our food sales. All of LA county acknowledged the importance of liquor over the last few months (as you have seen with all the loosened restrictions on alcohol sales), and there are obvious benefits to the building’s value if we added those items, but the landlord acted constantly out of ego rather than logic. The landlord intentionally sent us on a months-long wild-goose-chase for us to do endless amounts of due diligence to prove the liquor license and ventilation’s obvious benefits; each time we did our part, the landlord disappeared. The landlord also asked us to permit an exterior window that was replaced on the outside of the space in exchange for cooperation on those items; when we obtained the permit, again, the landlord did not provide the sign-offs we needed on the liquor license or hood. Throughout this entire process, we tried everything. We tried being nice. We tried being cooperative. We tried getting our lawyers involved, and so on. The landlord could not even be bothered to answer an email — and ultimately his answers to everything were no, and we were forced out of business. Again, you try operating a restaurant where you aren’t allowed to cook because there is no vent, or where you cannot supplement your bagel and lox with a damn mimosa.
As a minority-owned business made up of me and a BIPOC chef/ partner and a single mother who used life insurance money from her young husband’s untimely death, pouring everything into this business, this is a tragic loss for us that hurts unlike anything else.
Take a look at the landlord’s management team. AS a group of privileged, entirely white, almost entirely male group, it’s clear that the landlord comes from a different background that has prevented him from understanding what it takes for us to succeed. He has not hired a single black person on his upper management team. To him, we’re just a tenant, and we will be replaced by a group that’s less needy. Landlord’s management team: https://mwestholdings.com/staff/
On a positive note, and more than anything, we are blown away by the outpouring of love and attention we have received. We look forward to coming back from this even stronger once we find a new location. We have received thousands of likes and comments on our closing announcement, and the news has been spreading rapidly about the unjust treatment we have received from Karl Slovin and his team.
