Cuban bread, pastelitos and empanadas are just a few of the bakery items manufactured at Pastry Express, a family-owned industrial bakery that once operated inside a building in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood.
“We had at the time of the eviction around 35 employees…most of them from Little Haiti or from Hialeah,” says Jose Molina, one of the owners of Pastry Express.
Workers he says were left unemployed August of 2022 when the City of Miami evicted them after deeming the building an unsafe structure.
“Typically if a landlord wants to repurpose the property they'll negotiate with the tenant and compensate them for the value of their lease,” says Attorney Robert Stok, who represents Grupo Sur, the owners of Pastry Express.
The Hurricane season is on. Our meteorologists are ready. Sign up for the NBC 6 Weather newsletter to get the latest forecast in your inbox.
In a lawsuit, Grupo Sur alleges their landlord, LRMF abused the 40-year recertification process to evict them, years before their lease was up.
“In my opinion they manufactured the whole situation. It all started with a certification that was upon them to comply with. It had been expired for 10 years. They never did anything about it one day they decided that it was all about getting that done,” says Raul Ortiz de la Renta, the other owner of Pastry Express.
The lawsuit claims LRMF hired the engineering firm Plaza and Associates to inspect the building with the pretext of getting the 40-year recertification but instead of making any necessary repairs, that firm handed the city of Miami a report deeming the building unsafe which prompted the eviction.
Local
“They used the lack of compliance in their favor to get the tenant out,” says Molina.
In a motion, Grupo Sur cites an internal memo where a vice-president of LRMF’s parent company writes in May of 2022, “How are we looking at Grupo Sur? Sounded like there might be a strategy to get them out.”
Get them out to make way for a neighborhood development project they now tout on their website…project that according to the lawsuit doesn’t “jibe” with the operation of the “industrial factory and bakery business.”
“In the process we found out that they hired an engineering firm…they did it with the intention of tailoring the report they were going to produce to their liking,” says Ortiz de la Renta.
In court records Grupo Sur alleges “LRMF discussed in internal memos it felt confident they could control (William) Plaza and his team to provide them the exact report they needed for Grupo.”
“We saw a clear indication that the landlord felt that they could control the engineering firm,” says Attorney Robert Stok.In an email, the owner of that engineering firm told us “Due to this being a pending legal matter, we hereby decline to comment on your story.”
But in court records, they denied the allegations.
After that firm deemed the building unsafe, Grupo Sur hired another engineering firm who concluded “… the building could have and should have been able to remain occupied while specific repairs were made to comply with the 40-year inspection certification” but they say they were never able to return to the building, not even to retrieve their equipment.
The owners of Grupo Sur say they are not anti-development, they just feel the way they were removed was wrong and it destroyed a family business that took them 19 years to build.
Attorneys for LRMF declined to comment, but in court they denied allegations of breach of contract and conspiring to evict their tenant.
