A Cook County judge Friday denied an emergency injunction filed by attorneys representing vendors at the Little Village Discount Mall to prevent the imminent lockout of about 40 vendors from the south side of the storied mall on Sunday.
The hearing took place Thursday, and Cook County Judge Caroline K. Moreland ruled against the injunction Friday.
The vendors’ attorneys argued that their clients should be 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. Ramsin Canon, of Canon Law Group, 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 told the Tribune on Tuesday. “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.”
But Moreland’s written ruling said the vendors’ agreements with P.K. Mall Inc. did not satisfy all the legal checkpoints to be considered a lease.
Canon said the case is still not over, and he will back in court for the vendors in July to get them back to the Discount Mall.
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 Sunday.
