Attorneys representing vendors at the Little Village Discount Mall filed an emergency injunction Tuesday to prevent the imminent lockout of about 40 vendors from the south side of the storied mall on March 26.
Vendors were expected to have vacated their booths by the end of this week — or be locked out and have their goods confiscated and moved off-site into storage at their expense — after Novak Development, the owner of the plaza, announced in February that it had reached a deal to extend the lease of only one of the mall’s two operators. The deal meant closing one side of the shopping center indefinitely, shuttering nearly half of the vendors who make up the Discount Mall by March 26.
But for merchants, there’s a glimmer of hope, however temporary: They are now waiting on the Cook County Circuit Court to schedule an emergency hearing on their motion for a temporary restraining order.
If vendors are locked out of the mall, the complaint filed Tuesday states, they would potentially face irreparable harm and suffer the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise and goods, given that they operate on small margins and day-to-day sales.
“(The mall operators) took the benefits of collecting rent from these people all this time. But now they want to treat them like licensees and kick them out with little notice, no relocation fees, nothing,” said Ramsin Canon of Canon Law Group, the attorney representing the mall’s vendors. “They got the benefit of (having) long-term tenants. But now they don’t want any of the duties or responsibilities of (having) long-term tenants.”
Novak purchased the plaza for $17.5 million about three years ago and had new plans for the shopping center.
“Novak does not comment on active litigation,” a spokeswoman for the developer said in a statement to the Tribune regarding the emergency injunction filed Tuesday.
Vendors at the Little Village mall — a culturally rich site of generational significance — sell a variety of goods, including Central and South American instruments, handcrafted boots and cowboy hats, Spanish-language and Latin American music, film and art, handmade jewelry and clothing for birthdays, proms, quinceañeras, baptisms and christenings, and electronics, home goods, snacks and food.
“We were seeking a judgment from the court that says that our clients are tenants, and therefore they have all the rights that a tenant would have under a lease agreement,” Canon said. “Because it might take some time before that issue is resolved, we wanted to get a preliminary injunction to basically preserve the status quo until the court makes that determination.”
Canon said his clients should be considered tenants — and not week-to-week licensees, as the operators claim they are — and thus they have all the rights that a tenant would have under a lease agreement. Furthermore, he said, the mall operators haven’t claimed that vendors are defaulting on rent payments or that they have broken any rent agreement terms.
“Some of these folks have been there for 30 years, 20 years, 15 years, 10 years — long periods of time. They’ve invested significant money bringing in fixtures, shelving, display cases, things to make these into legitimate shops,” Canon said. “They’re clearly tenants and, therefore, they should have other rights that you would have under a commercial tenancy in Illinois, and that includes the right not to be just locked out of the property for no reason.”
Today the commercial strip on West 26th Street is the second-highest-grossing shopping and tax revenue hub in the city after downtown’s Michigan Avenue, earning the nickname “the second Magnificent Mile.”
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The plaza, located at 3115 W. 26th St., houses some businesses alongside the Discount Mall, which is operated by two leasing companies. Pilsen Plaza Corp., which is staying, is owned by business owner Kyunhee Park. The other one, P.K. Mall Inc., operates the south side of the mall where vendors have set up shop.
Under the new landlord’s proposed rent increase, P.K. Mall Inc. decided it wouldn’t be able to follow its core mission of offering “below market-value rents and short-term agreements with little to no credit history, in order to allow local families, many of whom are immigrants, to start and build sustainable businesses with minimum risk,” according to a letter sent to the merchants in early March.
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, who represents Little Village, said he hopes Novak Development can work in good faith with the vendors and city government to prevent the closure of successful businesses that have survived economic recessions and even the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What is the rush to shut down?” he said. “We have hundreds of jobs that are going to be cut overnight without an alternative and without planning. The very least that (Novak) should be able to do is to give them enough time so that the city can help relocate them.”
“I hope that the next mayor of the city of Chicago takes measures with these kinds of greedy developers,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “This cannot be called economic development. There is literally displacement followed by the extraction of wealth in immigrant communities that continues to generate inequality, unemployment, poverty and violence. The way to address violence in the city of Chicago is creating economic opportunity.”
Chicago Tribune’s Laura Rodríguez Presa contributed.
