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March 19, 2015

Austin Landlords Demolish Piñata Store, Call Mexican Tenants "Roaches": "The building still had all the inventory, cash registers and some personal property inside. Sergio and his wife Monica say they were given no prior warning and were up-to-date on their rent with a lease good until 2017."

The morning of February 12, 2015, Austinite Sergio Lejarazu was driving past his small business, a piñata and bouncy house store called Jumpolin at 1401 E. Cesar Chavez Street, on his way to drop his daughter off at school. That’s when he noticed something strange. Jumpolin wasn’t there anymore. He pulled over and quickly learned that his new landlords, Jordan French and Darius Fishertwo 2007 Vanderbilt University gradsoperating as F&F Real Estate Ventures, had demolished the building that Jumpolin occupied for eight years. The building still had all the inventory, cash registers and some personal property inside. Sergio and his wife Monica say they were given no prior warning and were up-to-date on their rent with a lease good until 2017.
Turns out, F&F were in such a hurry to demolish the building, because they had rented out an adjacent building that shared a lot with Jumpolin for a tech entrepreneur party scheduled to coincide with SXSW on the night of March 14. But F&F couldn’t get a variance from the city allowing them to skip the parking for their guests, so F&F’s agentACI Design Build Contractors withdrew the request for a variance and applied, instead, for a permit to demolish the building in which Jumpolin was housed. I guess that’s one way to make room for a parking lot. No one from the city verified the building was vacant because, apparently, that’s not part of the protocol.
"Making sure if someone is living in a building or has property stored in the building seems to me much more between the owner of the building and the tenant,” City of Austin Historic Preservation Officer Steve Sadowsky told the Austin Chronicle. “And that's not the city's concern."
While F&F’s most ardent rationalization for demolishing the Lejarazus’ business is that the couple didn’t pay their February rent, the application to demolish was made on January 22 and approved on January 23. There’s also the little matter of a video of Sergio Lejarazu paying the February rent. The couple made the video, because F&F claimed they weren’t receiving the Lejarazus’ rent checks as soon as they acquired the property in October. 

12 comments:

  1. AntiRacist is AntiWhiteMarch 19, 2015 at 9:26 AM

    boo fucking hoo. a beaner got his shit business demolished... I think all spics need to be deported back to their shit 3rd world south of the border..

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  2. Unless your a full blooded Native American, you are also an outsider, so GET THE FUCK OUT and GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM, we don't want your racist white power dumb ass here!

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  3. Who knew Vanderbuilt has a "Slum Lord" course? Incidentally, this unfortunate couple looks as *white* as any white person I've ever seen. I hope the local community put the punk landlords toes to the fire. Hopefully the victims of these two morons settle for enough money to build a newer and better place for their business.

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  4. So -- the man who stole your girl was from there as well, huh?

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  5. "Native" Americans were also immigrants from Asia.

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  6. DNA harvested from the remains of an infant buried 13,000 years ago confirms that the earliest widespread culture in North America was descended from humans who crossed over to the New World from Asia, scientists say.

    The research, also suggests that many contemporary Native Americans are direct descendants of the so-called Clovis people, whose distinctive stone tools have been found scattered across North America and Mexico.

    The origins and genetic legacy of the people who made Clovis tools have been topics of debate among scientists. While most archaeologists think that the Clovis people were descended from Asians, an alternative theory suggests that the Clovis ancestors emigrated from southwestern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum more than 15,000 years ago.



    The Native Americans were here for over 13,000 years, before people started immigrating here, so I think they have the right to call everyone else immigrants.

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  7. I hope they sue the Vanderbuilt punks for everything they have.

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  8. http://kxan.com/2015/02/18/crews-shut-off-gas-in-cesar-chavez-street-main-break/

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  9. I wonder if my bones are dug up in 13,000 they would consider me a Native American.

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  10. Doubtful, unless an alien race is doing the digging, as with our current track record on how we treat this world, humans will have wiped themselves off the planet by then, and nature will have reclaimed the planet.

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  11. freewheelinfranklin543March 19, 2015 at 11:47 AM

    Despicable. Sue their butts and put em outa business!

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  12. It's kinda disturbing how a house, or business, can be demolished, by a wrecking crew, without their even checking to see if the owner even knows about it, ( or worse, whether anyone is still inside ! ) I've heard similar stories before, like a couple goes away on vacation, only to come home to a demolished house,& something else being built in its place.
    All it takes is a few phone calls from a vindictive prankster, & lets not overlook how odiously corrupt this country has gotten in the last 2 decades....

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