We Need Some Rebranding
I work for a leisure company. Think soft play, indoor soccer, laser tag. Prior to lockdown, managers and the big bosses were negotiating the renewal of the lease on one of our parks. Things were going mostly smoothly, however, the landlords were difficult to contact. Then 2020 hit the fan. All of our sites were closed, and everything was thrown into a mess.
Negotiations began to slip down the priority list, and nobody thought the landlord would push an eviction for an expired lease during this period. Especially with it still getting rent, despite the site’s closure, and the closure of every business and restaurant in the immediate area. We were so wrong. A few days ago, we received a letter saying we had seven days to leave the premises and take everything with us.
We were also reminded that anything left in the building after seven days will become the landlord’s property. That line is very important. Now, a lot of construction goes into installing our equipment into a new building, which makes emptying one even harder. Add a lockdown, with no staff and most businesses shut, and it meant that saving much of our assets would prove to be extremely difficult.
To lose a profitable site and all of its assets is definitely a blow to our company. But here is where it gets worse. A few days into our seven-day eviction, we find out that the landlord has been advertising our park…to our competitors. But he isn’t offering just the building, he is offering ALL OF OUR STUFF PRE-INSTALLED. “Ready to go, just needs re-branding.”
It all becomes clear. The landlord has evicted us from the property in an attempt to increase rent and make a solid profit from our equipment installed because he thinks we won’t be able to empty the park. We were furious. And here is where gaming the system came in. Again, we were told we had seven days to move everything we owned out of the property.
So that’s what we did. Local businesses from all around offered up free space to store our things, a few people came back out of lockdown, and they all spent the rest of the week removing, selling, or destroying everything that was related to us. We didn’t even leave light fittings. In every other site vacation we have seen, we always end up leaving thousands of $$ worth of disco lights in the ceilings because they’re too hard to get.
We usually leave most of the construction in, as well as things like the bars and kitchens that all stay intact (recognizable as what they once were). But not this building. This time, it was so much different, and it was incredible. We ripped up the flooring we installed, tore down the walls that were not part of the original structure (wooden walls to divide up the space), ripped apart our managers’ offices and removed all artwork and lockers.
The landlord now has every new deal he has been making dead in the water, a large renovation bill to install new flooring, etc. (or a company willing to do it themselves like we were). Silver lining: The assets we got out of the site (fridges, TVs, equipment, food, tables) have all been sold, and the lack of rent and additional income has helped the business and paid staff wages. Here is what happened next.
We handed in the keys and it was probably the quickest handover we’ve ever had. The landlord clearly didn’t want to make any kind of conversation and there was definitely an elephant in the room, but he said NOTHING about the lack of our equipment. Complications did arise when we went to get back various deposits, but he had no case to withhold the deposits from us as the building was in excellent shape.
We had conducted much of the maintenance work ourselves, so the building was in a significantly better condition than we found it. We also cleaned up 99% of the rubbish and dirt from our demolition crusade so he couldn’t bill us for cleaning. A very minor bit of pressing from our team meant that we received everything owed back in full.
The building is still vacant and as of yet we don’t know of any potential buyers. At this moment in time, our company is still standing despite the closures and lack of business, staff are all still employed and doing well.