The businesswoman competing with Katy Perry to buy a former convent in Los Feliz is suing the property owners of an Arts District building, who she alleges are trying to drive her tavern out of business to try to get higher rent from another tenant.
Dana Hollister filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Odyssesus Investment Group LLC and its two principals, Gideon and Daniel Kotzer. The suit’s allegations include fraud, negligent misrepresentation, breach of lease and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The complaint seeks unspecified damages as well as a court declaration that Hollister’s lease of the premises is good through September 2021.
The Kotzers could not be immediately reached Friday.
According to the lawsuit, Hollister leased the property from Odyssesus for her business, now known as Villains Tavern, on Palmetto Street in September 2006. The Arts District at that time had now yet developed into the popular hospitality area that it is Friday, the suit states.
Hollister waited two years to get a conditional use permit and open her business, but paid rent the entire time, the suit states. The tavern offers live entertainment as permitted under the lease agreement, the suit states.
However, despite the agreement, Odyssesus has tried to force Villains Tavern to move by denying it has a valid lease; by asserting that the monthly rent from Oct. 1 to September 2017 is higher than the nearly $12,000 Hollister claims she is obligated to pay; by depriving her of storage areas and an important walk-in refrigerator she used to store food and beer; by restricting parking at the tavern; and by interfering with Hollister’s presentation of music and live entertainment.
Hollister is a defendant in a lawsuit filed in June 2015 by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles concerning the sale by a Los Feliz convent by two nuns who used to live there. The archdiocese maintains the nuns did not have the authority to make the deal with Hollister.
The archdiocese says Perry has agreed to pay $14.5 million for the Waverly Drive property, consisting of $10 million in cash and an agreement to provide an alternative property for the house of prayer worth $4.5 million. In contrast, Hollister paid only $44,000 and agreed to a contingent promissory note, according to the archdiocese.
— City News Service