A local, now-shuttered restaurant and one of the city's largest developers are locked in a court battle over tens of thousands of dollars and a patio.
Panino on Vine Street closed Dec. 14 after roughly four years at its brick-and-mortar location in Over-the-Rhine. Prior to that, owner Nino Loreto operated a successful food truck downtown.
After closing, Panino's former landlord, a subsidiary of the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) called Cintrifuse Landlord LLC, filed a lawsuit against Loreto and Panino alleging the restaurant owed $85,000 in back rent. 3CDC is also seeking restaurant equipment Loreto says he needs to reopen elsewhere. 3CDC says it owns that equipment.
Loreto fired back in a filing this week, saying that he moved his restaurant into the Vine Street space on promises that 3CDC would make best efforts to develop a patio next door at a space called Imagination Alley by April 2017. The Cincinnati Recreation Commission controlled that space, however, and declined 3CDC's plans for the patio in favor of keeping it a public park.
In his countersuit, Loreto alleges the patio was "a unique feature of the restaurant and one absolutely necessary for its success" and that 3CDC never had intentions of creating the beer garden space, thus breaching the contract between the restaurant and the developer.
"The lease was procured through a fraud perpetrated by 3CDC, Plaintiff's parent company, which represented that 3CDC would use its 'best efforts' to procure a necessary patio for the success of the restaurant, when in actuality 3CDC intended to exert practically no effort, and, in fact, exerted practically no effort for procuring the necessary patio, leaving the restaurant with no practical chance of success," the filing reads.
Loreto further alleges that 3CDC's Cintrifuse Landlord LLC assured him multiple times that that patio concept was making progress, even as other 3CDC officials were working with the Over-the-Rhine Community Council to keep the space a public park.
Panino paid $5,800 to rent the Vine Street space. Loreto claims he put $50,000 of personal savings into the business and that he and his mother worked without drawing a salary.
For its part, 3CDC says it made a full effort to develop the patio but could not convince the CRC to allow it to do so.
The development corporation has also said it offered Loreto a "generous" settlement and denied an allegation in Loreto's lawsuit that its president and CEO, Steve Leeper, threatened Loreto's father, Remo Loreto, in a meeting.
Loreto's lawsuit alleges that Leeper said in that meeting that "he was a Sicilian, and that 'Sicilians approach you with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a switchblade in the other,' clearly implying that if Defendants did not do his bidding, that 3CDC would work to cripple the son's business and interfere with its reopening."
3CDC, however, has called that meeting "amicable" and denies Leeper made the statements.