MARYSVILLE — The city and the owners of the Cedarcrest Golf Course restaurant are getting ready to fight out their differences in court.
The city declined to renew Pat and Kathy Regan’s lease to continue to run the restaurant at the city-owned golf course after the couple missed a deadline last fall. Marysville officials want the city to run the restaurant, while the Regans would like to stay.
The city and the couple have filed dueling lawsuits, with hearings scheduled for this week.
“I suspect both sides have buckled their seat belts now and we’ll see what happens,” said Bob Henry, the Seattle attorney representing the Regans.
Henry has filed suit in Snohomish County Superior court to force the city into arbitration over the matter. A hearing on the suit is scheduled for today.
On April 2, the city filed a motion in Superior Court to evict the Regans from the restaurant at the golf course at 6810 84th St. NE. A hearing on that motion is scheduled for Thursday.
On April 7, Henry filed the motion to prevent the eviction and force arbitration.
The Thursday hearing might not be necessary depending on the outcome of the hearing today, Henry said.
The city is remaining mostly silent on the matter, citing the legal sparring. City administrator Mary Swenson said last month that the city believes it can make more money at the restaurant than the Regans have.
The city wants to pay down the debt on the golf course buildings. About seven years ago, the city built a new pro shop and a new restaurant and made improvements to the course, built in 1927.
The city expects to be nearly $255,000 in the red for 2009 on the golf course, Swenson said. Without the debt, the golf course operates in the black, she said.
The Regans have run the restaurant for more than six years.
Kathy Regan said the restaurant is busy and makes a profit, but only by the couple scrimping and working long hours. She’s skeptical the city could make it work.
“They’re going to lose all the business we built,” Regan said.
In the legal actions, Henry says a clause in the restaurant lease calls for the parties to go to arbitration in case of a dispute.
Thomas Graafstra, an associate city attorney, said that because the Regans missed their deadline to renew the lease, they forfeit their rights to arbitration.
Henry builds much of his case on a precedent established in a 1979 dispute between the Wharf Restaurant at Fisherman’s Terminal and the Port of Seattle. In that case, the port was ordered to renew the lease after the restaurant owners showed that their failure to meet the renewal deadline was unintentional.
The Regans acknowledge missing the Oct. 1 deadline, explaining that they simply were busy and forgot to send notice to the city that they intended to renew. Many other circumstances are similar between the two situations, Henry said.
The Regans invested money in the restaurant, Henry noted in the suit, including a $10,000 canopy for outdoor events and a sound system.
Graafstra said several factors between the two situations are different. He said none of the Regans’ investments in the restaurant are permanent, that there are none they could not take with them if they left.
Also, Graafstra wrote that there’s no proof that the Regans’ failure to renew with the city was inadvertent.
Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439, sheets@heraldnet.com.
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