Call it revitalization or gentrification, the truth is, in recent years, many South Florida neighborhoods have gone through a big transformation, including Little Haiti.
A real-estate investment group has purchased several properties with the intention of developing the area, but there’s one small business that’s putting up a fight, claiming in a lawsuit they were wrongfully forced out.
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WATCH HEREOn a chilly South Florida winter day, Raul Ortiz de la Renta and Jose Molina stare in silence at what once was their family-owned bakery, Pastry Express, in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood.
“It's very sad, it's very disappointing, and it's a really bad feeling,” Molina says.
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“This project was a life project for us,” laments Ortiz de la Renta.
In court records, the businessmen allege they along with more than 30 of their employees were evicted from the bakery in 2022, when the city of Miami deemed the building an unsafe structure based on an engineering report that the new owner of the building, the real estate development group LRMF ordered, according to records, to comply with the 40-year building recertification requirement.
“They hired an engineering firm that they could control. And we actually have emails saying that they hired someone that we could control. And they did a very superficial cursory report, which they allowed the landlord to doctor,” said Robert Stok, an attorney representing Pastry Express
Investigations
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In the lawsuit the owners of Pastry Express filed against LRMF, they include those allegations and claim the landlord abused the 40-year recertification process in order to evict them, years before their lease was up because they were looking to rent out the building for more money.
“We signed a contract in 2013 for 15 years plus, and at the time of eviction, we still have more than six, between six and seven years still left in the contract,” said Molina.
Pastry Express’ attorney says, before the eviction LRMF was shopping the property around to a more upscale clientele that would fit their development plans.
“They were showing the property to companies like Apple Music and Live Nation, and they were advertising it and trying to bring in a different type of tenancy,” said Stok.
As our investigative team walks through the area, we notice all the homes and properties LRMF has purchased. In the middle of it all, the bakery that's in the center of this lawsuit.
In a recent ruling, a Miami-Dade judge granted the bakery’s request to allow punitive damages and add a claim for civil theft against LRMF because of what they allege happened to Pastry Express’ equipment after the eviction.
“They made it impossible for us to sell it, and we found out later on they had sold the equipment themselves,” said Ortiz de la Renta.
The NBC6 Investigative team tried talking to an LRMF representative who showed up at the former bakery, but neither he nor the company’s attorneys have wanted to comment on the case. In court records they denied allegations of breach of contract, conspiring to evict their tenant and argued against the admissibility of the civil theft claim.
“I believe that we eventually will prevail, and hopefully we'll get the compensation we need in order to get our business back,” says Ortiz de la Renta.
