A Decatur-area restaurant is closed and is looking at more than $100,000 in out-of-pocket costs due to rats its owner contends invaded his space from a business next door.
“We’ve been open for 17 years and never had a rodent problem until this thing exploded right next to us in early July,” said Aaron Melton, owner of Melton’s App & Tap. “We already took the proper precautions, and always took the proper safeguards. … Now we’re shut down and don’t know if we’ll ever be able to reopen.”
In a phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Melton said he voluntarily closed his restaurant, at 2500 North Decatur Road in the Medlock Plaza shopping center, on Nov. 6 after a customer spotted a rat there.
That sighting was only the latest – if most serious – symptom of an infestation that Melton said has been growing for months.
The problems began in July, when Melton’s employees discovered a hot dog bag that had been broken into, the restaurant owner said. Signs of a rodent invasion continued, despite efforts by Melton’s to secure its food and space against contamination.
Eventually, the shopping center owner brought in a pest specialist who traced the problem to openings where rodents were entering the building, and to the Pet Supermarket next door, where rats had gotten into pet food, Melton said.
Things got so bad, Melton said he hired a lawyer, went to court and got a judge’s injunction shutting Pet Supermarket down on Oct. 20. The court ordered the store to remain closed until it eradicated the rat problem.
At a hearing Tuesday in Decatur, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Daniel Coursey Jr. gave Pet Supermarket another week to complete repairs to its side of a common wall separating the store from the restaurant.
Channel 2 Action News covered the hearing and reports that the store's lawyer told the court that her client continues to work on the problem.
"We have no intent to open our doors until such time we can certify to this court with an affidavit from our exterminator that we are rat-free,” attorney Tammi Brown said.
Neither the pet store’s owner nor its attorney would comment on the case, Channel 2 reported. Brown declined to comment when contacted by the AJC by phone at her office Tuesday evening.
At the moment, Melton said, “we are in a state of limbo. We want to do the repair work to our restaurant necessary to make sure there’s no contamination left behind … but the repair work will cost us thousands and thousands of dollars, and we cannot do that knowing we have a neighbor next door where the problem continues.”
“The total cost of closing down and the repair work will be in excess of $100,000," he said.
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