Durham arcade bar’s doors get padlocked amid rent dispute and social media posts
The five-year run for Durham bar Quarter Horse Arcade ended this week, not with a bang but with a padlock.
The basement bar filled with vintage arcade games saw its doors locked with chains Monday after a rent dispute spilled onto social media.
Quarter Horse co-owner Jon Williams said the bar hadn’t paid its January rent and was unlikely to make February either. He notified the bar’s landlord, Raleigh developer CityPlat, of the circumstances, citing crushed sales amid a new surge of COVID cases in the last months of the year.
Williams said he was given until Friday, Jan. 28, to vacate the space.
“There was no discussion of what we can do to work it out, no offer or nothing,” Williams said. “It was just, ‘Turn in your keys.’”
But over last weekend ,Williams posted that emailed order on Quarter Horse’s Instagram page, setting off a wave of support on social media. By Monday, Quarter Horse was locked out.
‘We cannot work with a tenant after that’
CityPlat property manager Trent Carpenter said the escalation and expedited eviction was in response to harassing emails the company had received from Quarter Horse supporters. He said those emails, coupled with the late rent, led to the bar being locked out.
“We didn’t want to end the lease,” Carpenter said. “We intended to renew it; it’s going to be difficult to lease to another tenant. ... Because of the actions the tenant did, which led to threats and harassment of my assistant property manager, we cannot work with a tenant after that.”
But Williams said the payment portal Quarter Horse used to pay rent had already been closed before he posted the email on social media.
“I couldn’t make a payment if I wanted to,” he said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Quarter Horse had been given some breaks on its rent payments, Williams said.
Whien CityPlat took over the Kress building last May, Quarter Horse received some temporary rent abatement, paying 50 percent of the bar’s monthly rent. Before that, in 2020 when the bar was closed for most of the year, Williams said Quarter Horse had an agreement with the previous landlord to pay even less, roughly 15 percent of the monthly rent.
Vincenzo Verdino, a principal in charge of investments at CityPlat, said that while the two sides had an understanding on a temporary reduction in rent, Quarter Horse was still considered in default of its lease. He said that the initial five-year period of Quarter Horse’s lease had expired and that an option to extend the lease was not exercised by the bar. Since Nov. 1, Quarter Horse has been considered a month to month tenant.
Williams said he’s now pursuing the bar’s legal options. First and foremost that means getting roughly three dozen arcade games out of the space. Carpenter said CityPlat is eager to turn those back over to the bar owners as quickly as possible.
“One thousand percent yes, we want to coordinate with them to arrange a date for them to remove the machines as soon as possible,” Carpenter said.
CityPlat, a Raleigh developer and property management company, purchased downtown Durham’s Kress Building last year. Carpenter said the company had previously lost another tenant in the building and wasn’t aiming to lose a second in Quarter Horse.
“We obviously would have preferred to keep leasing to them,” Carpenter said. “Through COVID we’ve done as much as we can to accommodate them. This is a difficult time to run a business.
“Eviction, on our end, is a process we don’t like to do,” Carpenter said. “Our ultimate goal is that tenants and renters are happy and love the spaces we lease and obviously pay rent. We don’t enjoy evicting people. This is an unfortunate situation.”
Previous Durham bar locked out
The situation echoes a similar incident last year, when downtown Durham’s board game bar The Atomic Fern was also locked out of its space after failing to pay rent. The bar’s owner, Kevin Slater, sued the state of North Carolina, arguing COVID-related restrictions had cost The Atomic Fern thousands of dollars, resulting in the closure. The lawsuit was dismissed by a Durham judge last May, according to previous reporting in The News & Observer.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly grim for a bar like Quarter Horse, situated in a Downtown Durham basement, with no kitchen or outdoor seating. But despite the past two years, Williams thought he was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in the fall, with sales nearing pre-COVID numbers some months.
But then the omicron wave hit. Staff members started testing positive, he said, eventually leading to closings. For New Years Eve, one of Quarter Horse’s best nights of the year, Williams said the bar chose to be cautious and stayed closed.
That cascade of circumstances meant there wasn’t rent money for January, Williams said. The pandemic exploited the already razor-thin margins in the bar business, Williams said, where making rent month to month has been a struggle.
“It doesn’t take long to realize that the difference between feast and famine is getting 15 more people to walk in every day,” Williams said. “The difference between losing your shorts and making a little money is 15 people.”
Quarter Horse opened in 2017 as an arcade bar in the middle of Downtown Durham, co-owned by Brandon Mise, Williams and Murphy Turner. The bar featured a collection of nearly 40 arcade games, including more than a dozen pinball machines.
“It’s hard to be a kid of the 1980s and not be into old video games,” Williams said.
Williams said he and his business partner had pursued other locations, but nothing promising had come together. He considers Quarter Horse likely closed for good. He believes the increased development attention in Durham will push more small businesses out of downtown spaces.
“People should not be surprised by this,” Williams said. “The funky places that weren’t flogging the horse of capitalism as hard as they could have, those tend to be the first to go under, while the chains survive.”
Quarter Horse planned to go out with a big farewell, Williams said, but the padlock on the door had other plans. On Monday, the bar started a GoFundMe campaign for its staff, raising nearly $3,000 so far.
This story was originally published January 26, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
