A sizable showdown is brewing over the fate of the much-revamped Harbor Restaurant — the mothership of all restaurants to open their doors to customers on Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf since 1941.
Two weeks ago, John Thyne III, one of the restaurant’s new owners — not to mention a major buyer and seller of real estate and an up-to-his-elbows attorney in town — sued City Hall, claiming that the terms of the lease are unconscionably onerous and egregiously impossible for anyone hoping to make a go of it. Two years into his ownership, Thyne claims that the fine print of the lease, which was negotiated and agreed to by a prior owner, is adjusted upward every year and never goes down despite declining market realities. He has sought and failed to renegotiate those terms with City Hall. Talks have occurred but no changes got made, so Thyne is hoping a judge will intervene and help reform the lease.
For good measure, he added highly creative arguments into his filing papers. For example, he blames City Hall for letting the Funk Zone explode commercially unimpeded, failing to solve the homeless problem, and allowing a proliferation of problems that have undermined the commercial viability of anyone trying to do business on the waterfront…