07/26/2014
Dearest Shed Friends and Lovers.
It’s been nearly a year since we unexpectedly received an eviction notice and the dubious and frustrating circumstances around this eviction have never been resolved. For many reasons we have tried to leave things be. However, a number of events, including many rumours as to why we are no longer operating have continued to surface and we believe that it's responsible on our part to let people in the community know our perspective.
As a reminder, we were served an eviction notice in July 2013 stating that our license had been expired since the previous January. We had not been open in January and were never informed of this expiration. We were never given an opportunity to renew this license despite having been in the location for nearly 4 years. We were told the reason for the eviction was that the “premises were required for other purposes”. If anyone has been down to the government dock in the last two months this is very obviously not the case.
To make matters worse the owners of the new business in the “repurposed” location are the same individuals who made inquires into purchasing The Shed not two months before we were evicted. After having handed over all the information regarding the sale of our business to this interested party we were told that they had submitted a proposal to the Gibsons Harbour Authority (our landlords) and were waiting for a response. We never heard from them again. That is of course until we discovered late last fall that they would be operating a new business in our old location.
Until now we have been willing to consider the issue finished and to move on, however within months of being open the new and “re-purposed” business has begun advertising our most poplular menu items as specials. This has felt like the last straw in a situation that we didn’t think could get worse and have tried our best to ignore. When taking into consideration that the reason for our eviction was that the “premises were needed for other purposes” it seems unsavory that less than a year later a new business is serving similar menu items in the same location without any form of compensation.
As a first step we have asked the owners to refrain from doing this. We would like to encourage the patronage of this new establishment provided they are not serving items from our menu. We worked very hard for years with the help of many people to make a great business that people were fond of and it’s something that we don’t believe is just for the taking.
Sincerely,
Shiloh Sukkau
