'Poets Books' in Bishop Arts announces their landlord decided not to renew their lease; last day before closing will be April 26th and they will consolidate into their Deep Ellum location while looking for a new home

Posted by IcedCowboyCoffee@reddit | Dallas | View on Reddit | 18 comments

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Dawnzarelli@reddit

Is that what happened to the cigar shop next door, too? Please don’t let El Jordan Cafe be next. I wonder how many properties that landlord has there.

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baphometsbike@reddit

Bookshop is owned by the same person who owns the cigar shop and they are both moving

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IFuckedADog@reddit

That’s a real shame. I love Cigar Art.

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Dawnzarelli@reddit

I was down the street and someone next to me went to get a cigar and came back saying it was closed up. So it’s secondhand knowledge. I didn’t check in on it personally.

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Texas_Redditor@reddit

It was open yesterday. Bunch of old dudes out back on their lounge chairs smoking when I walked by

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IFuckedADog@reddit

They’re there all the time when the weather is good, I love it.

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Dawnzarelli@reddit

Weird. I wonder if the person who told me was mistaken. Hopefully so.

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Everywhere I go, I see landlords getting greedy and beloved businesses getting kicked out of places. Then inevitably the buildings wind up sitting empty for months/years. How does this benefit them? (unless it's for the "loss" write-off and they use it to play their taxes) Why can't they just make a deal with their tenants?

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stoic_spaghetti@reddit

Basically the way it works is:

current rent is $$2,000 (for example)
the landlord wants their property to be magically worth more, so they pretend it's worth $8,000 (for example)
The landlord is fully bought into the imaginary idea that their property is worth so much more, that they believe anything less than that imaginary value is a loss
The landlord believes that renting their place out for anything less than imaginary value will "de-value" their property and make their portfolio worth less
Their portfolio is something that is shopped around nationwide and sometimes worldwide—the Dallas tenant population is not the only group competing for this property, we are competing on a national and global salesmarket and against organizations that buy and bundle up properties in tens of millions of dollars of assets
the landlord believes they will hit a big payday one day by being a small part of a larger bundle acquisition, so a property sitting empty for months or years is just a small "cost of doing business" waiting for the big buyout
the city does nothing to prevent landlords from doing this, does nothing to protect the local markets, does nothing to tax speculative property sitting empty....the city establishes no incentives or penalties for doing this
people don't put enough organized pressure on the city to do something about it

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BlazinAzn38@reddit

There should just be monthly vacancy fees associated with it if the landlord chooses to kick a tenant out. Make it the same amount as the new rent they want and they can’t prohibit the old tenant from renting unless the old tenant was removed for cause. It incentivizes them to actually list it for a rent that’s competitive or just retain the good tenant

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super-rad@reddit

As I understand it - if you have a commercial mortgage that was secured based on a certain expectation of rental income, you cannot lower the rent without breaking the terms of your loan. So for big real estate investors its better to leave it vacant and write off the losses than offer lower rent to attract tenants.

For anyone who lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the 2010’s - the impacts of this were seen very clearly on N. 6th st

Started as the coolest street in the neighborhood full of local shops and bars.

Rents raised as investors moved in. Old local businesses moved out and new local businesses failed quickly as they couldn’t make ends meet.

Street slowly became mostly vacant store fronts.

Today - full of nothing but big chains and luxury retailers.

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GlendoverPark@reddit

No more landlords

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Dawnzarelli@reddit

Sadly, they probably saw the bookstore thriving and decided based on that it’s worth more. Shitty behavior.

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ponycorn_pet@reddit

In regards to point 8, that needs to change. The city needs to both pressure the landlords, and there should be some type of supplemental grant to float the difference for businesses that qualify based on, I don't know, tenure/enrichment/etc. There needs to be caps on what landlords can extort in their increases or penalties for non-renewals without another business immediately lined up

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vinhluanluu@reddit

We have a shop up in the Lewisville mall and the landlords wanted to double our lease plus have already increased our event rentals by at least 50% too. We rent one of the empty spaces for small events. With tariffs and shipping going up, we decided to close the store for now. It’s been brutal out there.