LAKE GENEVA — Simple Cafe used to lease the parking lot next to its restaurant for $700 a month. The lot is now closed after its new owner increased the lease price to $8,000 a month.
"Shoot, I have to pay for parking now?" said Simple Cafe customer Julie Grant when she came across the fenced-off lot. "I thought maybe I could go a different way around or something. I didn't realize this wasn't open anymore."
The parking lot formerly owned by Town Bank was sold to Robert Jeffreys 18 LLC last month for $1 million, according to real estate records.
Simple Cafe owner Young Cho says he sat down with the new owner to negotiate a price. However, Cho said their ask of $8,000 per month was far beyond the restaurant's price range.
"I asked them, 'Is this monthly or is this yearly?'" Cho said. "They had talked about wanting to be great neighbors and all of the rhetoric, then the next day after we talked, fences went up."
Cho and Simple Cafe explained the situation from their perspective with a note posted throughout the restaurant.
TMJ4 contacted Jeffrey Leeson, the point-of-contact for the parking lot's new owners, to learn their reasons for the closure.
In a text message, Leeson said:
"Town Bank had provided virtually free parking for the restaurant since 2011. The request was to have 38 parking spaces at 61 cents per day.
It was impossible for us to provide that amount of real estate as a gift to the restaurant.
Our request was to provide space for the restaurant to have parking at a rate of seven dollars a day per parking stall.
We met one time briefly with the owner. They said, 'No, thank you.' There was no counter offer or any further discussion to reach a solution."
—Jeffrey Leeson, Robert Jeffreys 18 LLC
The new owners hope to build 20 condominiums on the parking lot site. They approached Lake Geneva's Plan Commission with their proposal last August, which included a sketch of how the housing could look.
Cho said the Lazarczyk Family Funeral Home is now providing free parking to Simple Cafe staff members and customers.
Grant wonders how Simple Cafe customers will find a place to park when the restaurant's busy season gets underway.
"Parking will be an issue for people," Grant said. "They're going to have to go way down the block, circle around, or not come."
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