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DAVE MASON / NEWS-PRESSMayor Randy Rowse
The Santa Barbara City Council’s vote to pay $225,000 to Flightline Restaurant to settle a lawsuit over a disputed lease assignment was strictly a “business decision,” Mayor Randy Rowse said Monday.
“Council made a business decision,” he told the News-Press. “The city would have spent that money simply preparing for the case, regardless of the outcome. The situation is unfortunate, but it was the best decision to make financially.”
Mayor Rowse declined to address specific allegations made by Flightline owner and restaurateur Warren Butler that the city, acting in bad faith, caused the restaurant to fail by refusing to assign it the lease previously awarded to High Sierra Grill, its predecessor at 512 Norman Firestone Road, the former site of the Elephant Bar restaurant, at the Santa Barbara Airport.
“They started the process and kept holding things up and delaying it by not assigning it” to Flightline, instead of acting in a ”quick, reasonable and timely manner and not trying to change the lease,” Mr. Butler told the News-Press.
He said city officials at the time wanted instead to develop the side of the airport where the restaurant stood as part of the airport Master Plan.
“In the end, they wanted to get out of it,” he said. “They tried every trick in the book. They delayed it for years and threw one curve after another.”
The city, Mr. Butler charged, did not act in good faith, the basis of the lawsuit filed by Flightline against the city.
A Nov. 15 settlement between the parties negated the need for a jury trial.
The city agreed to settle after Superior Court Judge Donna Geck rejected the city’s request for a summary judgment against Flightline and instead said the case could go to trial.
“The city decided they wanted to settle and not go forward,” Mr. Butler said. “The bottom line is the judge ruled in our favor and said these guys have a legitimate case against the city and what they’ve done.
“They had to settle because they knew what had been done was not legal and they were going to lose,” Mr. Butler said.
Mayor Rowse declined to address Mr. Butler’s claims.
“There are a lot of assertions in there which don’t really rise to the level of a response, so I won’t,” he said.
According to Mr. Butler, city taxpayers lost more than the $225,000 settlement agreement because the city had to hire an outside attorney to represent it ($250,000) and lost tax revenue it could have reaped ($250,000-plus) had the lease been assigned to Flightline, which would have allowed it to operate and earn money over the past three years, instead of being forced to close against its wishes.
Instead, he said, the city let the restaurant languish in an increasingly dilapidated condition.
He said he had changed the restaurant’s concept to one that celebrated the city’s aviation history and that the city’s decision not to assign Flightline a lease “took away something special from the community. We were going to be a gem.”
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