UPDATED

Tl;dr (SPOILERS) landlord gives us 7 days to vacate our leisure business from the building, he thinks we cant empty the business during lockdown, and proceeds to advertise OUR equipment for sale to our competition. We sell everything in 7 days and destroy the rest. Enjoy no rent and the loss of your potential buyers.

I work for a leisure company, think soft play, indoor soccer, laser tag (can't be specific) Prior to lockdown, Managers and the big bosses were negotiating the renewal of the lease on one of our parks. Things were going mostly smoothly, however, the landlords were difficult to contact.

Then 2020’s shit hit the fan.

All of our sites were closed, and everything was thrown into a mess. Negotiations began to slip down the priority list; nobody thought the landlord would push an eviction for an expired lease during this period. Especially with it still getting rent, despite the sites closure, and the closure of every business and restaurant in the immediate area. We were wrong.

A few days ago we received a letter saying we had 7 days to leave the premises and take everything with us. We are reminded that anything left in the building after 7 days will become the landlord's property! (that line is very important).

Now a lot of construction goes into installing our equipment into a new building, which makes emptying one even harder. Add a lockdown, with no staff and most businesses shut, it meant that saving much of our assets would prove to be extremely difficult.

To lose a profitable site and all of its assets is definitely a blow to our company. But here is where it gets worse;

A few days into our 7-day eviction, we find out that the landlord has been advertising our park to our competitors. But he isn’t offering just the building, he is offering ALL OF OUR STUFF PRE INSTALLED. “Ready to go, just needs re-branding.” The landlord has evicted us from the property in an attempt to increase rent and make a solid profit from our equipment installed because he thinks we won't be able to empty the park.

We were furious.

And here is where the malicious compliance came in, we were told we had 7 days to move everything we owned out of the property. so that's what we did. Local businesses from all around offered up free space to store our things, a few people came back out of lockdown and they all spent the rest of the week removing, selling or destroying everything that was related to us. We didn't even leave light fittings.

In every other sight vacation we have seen, we always end up leaving thousands of $$ worth of disco lights in the ceilings because they’re too hard to get. We leave most the construction in, as well as things like the bars and kitchens that all stay intact (recognisable as what they once were) but not this building.

We ripped up the flooring we installed, tore down the walls that were not part of the original structure (Wooden walls to divide up the space) ripped apart our manager's offices and removed all artwork, and lockers.

The landlord now has every new deal he has been making dead in the water, a large renovation bill to install new flooring etc. (or a company willing to do it themselves like we were).

Lockdown has been extended another 4 weeks, so he has at least another 4 weeks without rent (we were paying) and won't have any potential buyers.

Silver lining: The assets we got out of the site (fridges, tv’s, equipment, food, tables) have all been sold, and the lack of rent and additional income has helped the business and paid staff wages.

UPDATE

Hi Everyone! I'm so sorry for how long an update has taken, I was waiting for things to unfold.

Here is what happened next:

We handed in the keys and it was probably the quickest handover we’ve ever had. The landlord Cleary didn’t want to make any kind of conversation and there was definitely an elephant in the room, but he definitely said NOTHING about the lack of our equipment.

Complications did arise when we went to get back various deposits, But he had no case to withhold the deposits from us as the building was in excellent shape. (we had conducted much of the maintenance work ourselves, so the building was in a significantly better condition than we found it, (we also cleaned up 99% of the rubbish and dirt from our demolition crusade so he couldn't bill us for cleaning) )

A very minor bit of pressing from our legal team meant that we received everything owed back in full!

The building is still Vacant and as of yet we don't know of any potential buyers.

At this moment in time our company is still standing despite the pandemic closures and lack of business, staff are all still employed and doing well!

A huge thanks again for everyone who took the time to read this and to those who were dedicated enough to remind me for updates :D Big shoutout as-well to the amazing people who gave awards, I really really appreciate it and I’ve been making sure to pass on the good karma :)