In a phone call this afternoon, Dan Nolen of Smith's Olde Bar expressed his frustration with reports that say the long-running Atlanta bar, restaurant and music venue is closing.
“I’ve had to say no comment because we’ve been in litigation,” Nolen said.“So we couldn’t tell our side of the story, yet. The thing I want to say now is that Smith’s is not closing any time soon. Not tomorrow. Not next week, Not next month.”
Nolan revealed that he and business partner Mike Reeves will take further legal action to save their business, at least for the short term.
The back story, first reported by Tomorrow's News Today , is that the Morningside strip center that housed Smith's and the offices of Nolen-Reeves Music for some 23 years was owned by Beverly Taylor, who passed away earlier this year at age 97.
After Taylor’s death, her family decided to put the property up for auction, set the date for August 28, and attempted to negotiate a new lease with Nolan and Reeves.
“After she passed, the family offered us a short term lease, but they were terms we could not meet,” Nolen said. “The bottom line was that they said that if we couldn’t make a deal, we were out, and we’ve gone back and back and forth since.”
According to a Daily Report story , two actions filed in Fulton County courts in July "indicate that the property's new owners have demanded that club's owner, Nolen-Reeves Music, vacate the premises after demanding more rent and increased insurance coverage for the space."
Nolen said he and Reeves finally put their own short term lease “on the landlord’s table” with a deadline. Since the lease was not signed by 6 p.m. today, Nolen said he and Reeves will to go back to court to settle the matter.
“We understand the family wanting to sell the building, but we’re not closing,”Nolen said. “We’ll either have an acceptable short term lease or we’ll be in litigation and let a judge and jury decide if and when we’re going to close.”
It seems like Nolen is already warming up for his day in court.
“We just try to be good neighbors and we have a lot of good neighborhood support, Nolen said. “For every person who goes upstairs to hear a band, there’s a person who comes in to have a burger and a couple of beers or maybe shoot some pool and hang out.
“Our take on it is that we are going to honor our commitments to the bands that we’ve booked, and fight to save the jobs of our employees, and fight to save a small Atlanta music venue that’s been around a long time.”
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