Barbara Lynch Blames ‘Uncooperative Landlord’ For Sudden Closure Of 3 Boston Restaurants
Three restaurants owned by famed Boston chef Barbara Lynch in the Fort Point neighborhood are closing immediately, her restaurant group announced Friday.
The restaurateur said the closures of Sportello, Menton and Drink were due to “an uncooperative landlord,” Acadia Realty Trust, and skyrocketing rents in the area, the Boston Business Journal reported. The closures are expected to result in 100 employees losing jobs.
“Boston is no longer the same place where I opened seven restaurants over the last 25 years,” Lynch said, according to the BBJ. “Properties have been flipped and flipped, and the landlords just want the rents that only national chains can sustain.”
The three restaurants were located at Acadia Realty Trust's 16K SF The Restaurants at Fort Point property at 346-354 Congress St. The property was home to Drink and Sportello since 2008 and Menton since 2010, according to Sportello's website.
For the three spots, which were under The Lofts at FP3 luxury condo building, Lynch paid $88K a month to Acadia, even with no functioning air conditioning at times, issues with water supply, and damage from burst pipes and flooding, the Boston Globe reported Friday.
Under Lynch's new chief operating officer, Lorraine Tomlinson-Hall, the organization tried to implement cost cuts, but those “fell on deaf ears with the Congress Street landlords,” the group said in a statement.
Acadia Realty Trust didn't respond to Bisnow's request for comment.
Lynch was accused by former employees in an April Boston Globe report of fostering a toxic work culture, but her spokesperson pushed back, calling it a “coordinated attack by a group of individuals targeting Barbara and the brand she has built over decades,” according to WBUR.
Her group plans to sell two other restaurants, The Butcher Shop and Stir, in the South End to “former protégés,” the BBJ reported. Restaurants No. 9 Park in Beacon Hill, B&G Oysters in the South End and The Rudder in Gloucester are expected to stay open.
