Main | Monday, April 21, 2014

BROOKLYN: Bar Owner Sues Landlord For Lease Clause Banning Gay Bars

A bar owner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn is suing his landlord because his lease specifically bans him from the turning his business into a gay bar.
John McGillion says he wants to transform Lulu’s to take advantage of a growing gay and lesbian community in the neighborhood. But there’s just one problem: his lease specifically prohibits McGillion from running a gay bar. “I am barely scraping by on the proceeds of the bar. If I am permitted to operate a gay bar at the premises I believe that I will be able to make a considerable profit,” McGillion said in Brooklyn Supreme Court papers filed last week. Greenpoint was up and coming when John McGillion opened Lulu’s back in 2005, just a block from the East River. He added two mezzanine levels and “put a lot of money” into the business, McGillion said. Still, the joint “lost money, there’s no doubt,” he told The Post. McGillion, who owns a handful of other bars in Brooklyn and Manhattan, believes he could have done another “40 to 50 percent” more business as a gay establishment.

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