Austin Landlords Demolish Piñata Store
for SXSW, Call Mexican Tenants ‘Roaches’
by Cindy Casares March 16, 2015
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 Fisher, two 2007 Vanderbilt University grads operating 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 agent ACI 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.
When F&F once again made the claim in February that they had received no rent check, the Lejarazus’ lawyer, Doran Peters, sent a letter dated February 11 to F&F’s attorney saying that his clients paid the rent and asked for confirmation that they would not be locked out of their business the following day. Instead, F&F had ACI Design Build Contractors run a bulldozer over it.
French defended the move in an interview with Austin Culture Map by referring to the Lejarazus as “roaches,” a word that has been levied against people of Mexican descent throughout this country’s history.
“Say you have a house that was infested by roaches,” French said. “You have to clean that up.”
French went on to speculate that the Lejarazus, who are of Mexican descent, couldn’t be making a living selling piñatas, telling the reporter the couple must be dealing in “uncontrolled substances.”
Gentrification is something all Austinites live with now that Austin has made it onto every “Best City” list in America for the past ten years, but East Austinites have been treated as second-class citizens from day one. The neighborhoods on the east side of I-35 were created by policies meant to maintain racial and ethnic segregation during the 20th century. Decades of this sanctioned discrimination coupled with F&F’s callous disregard for the Lejarazus’ dignity and livelihood have spawned a community backlash.
A Facebook page called “Justice For Jumpolin Community Action” cropped up, and the group launched an email campaign to dissuade Splash, the party sponsor listed on city records, from going through with their event. On February 25, Splash CEO Ben Hindman, who also graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2007, issued a statement to the Facebook group assuring community members that Splash would be moving their party to another location. He swore that he knew nothing of F&F’s plans to raze the building in which Jumpolin was housed.
The party happened Saturday night at a new location, and was co-hosted by General Assembly, a combination tech school and start-up incubator headquartered in New York City that is launching its 13th campus in Austin this month. GA, which counts among its four founders an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, quietly arrived in Austin in December. The company has been working out of temporary locations until they move into permanent digs and begin providing full and part time classes at the end of March or early April. Though GA was billed as a co-sponsor of the party on the invitation, it has never been mentioned in the media coverage of the demolition. I mention it now to raise the point that much of Austin’s gentrification is fueled by rapid growth of a tech industry that recruits highly paid talent to Austin who have no historical ties to the community and plenty of money to spend. In fact, a recent study published by The Atlantic showed that the top ten economically segregated metro areas in America “reads like a who’s who of major knowledge economy centers,” with Austin coming in at number nine below number two Silicon Valley and number one Huntsville, Alabama.
Splash, a NYC-based event management website, is the tech darling behind hundreds of the corporate events held during SXSW. If you RSVP’d for a party at SXSW this year, you likely did it on a Splash event page.
That Splash and GA moved their party was a tiny victory for the community, but because F&F obtained a permit from the city to demolish the building, the Austin Police Department won’t file criminal charges against them. That means the only option the Lejarazus have is to sue F&F in civil court, which they are doing.
At a hearing on March 3, a Travis County judge issued an injunction halting any construction on the property at 1401 E. Cesar Chavez until the case is heard. The video of Sergio Lejarazu paying his February rent was one of the items presented during the hearing.
Justice For Jumpolin, along with other community activist groups, are calling for a boycott of F&F’s other businesses, appealing to SXSW attendees and other Austin tourists to boycott F&F’s rental properties listed on Airbnb at 93 Navasota and 206 San Marcos in Austin. The group is also calling for the county attorney to press charges against F&F.
On March 12, Texas State Representative Eddie Rodriguez, whose district includes the former Jumpolin site, filed a bill that would make it illegal to demolish property without notifying tenants.
“It’s such an unconscionable act, that the city had no reason to think that someone would lie on a demolition application,” Doran Peters said.
I guess innocence is another thing Austin is losing to gentrification.
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 agent ACI 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.
When F&F once again made the claim in February that they had received no rent check, the Lejarazus’ lawyer, Doran Peters, sent a letter dated February 11 to F&F’s attorney saying that his clients paid the rent and asked for confirmation that they would not be locked out of their business the following day. Instead, F&F had ACI Design Build Contractors run a bulldozer over it.
French defended the move in an interview with Austin Culture Map by referring to the Lejarazus as “roaches,” a word that has been levied against people of Mexican descent throughout this country’s history.
“Say you have a house that was infested by roaches,” French said. “You have to clean that up.”
French went on to speculate that the Lejarazus, who are of Mexican descent, couldn’t be making a living selling piñatas, telling the reporter the couple must be dealing in “uncontrolled substances.”
Gentrification is something all Austinites live with now that Austin has made it onto every “Best City” list in America for the past ten years, but East Austinites have been treated as second-class citizens from day one. The neighborhoods on the east side of I-35 were created by policies meant to maintain racial and ethnic segregation during the 20th century. Decades of this sanctioned discrimination coupled with F&F’s callous disregard for the Lejarazus’ dignity and livelihood have spawned a community backlash.
A Facebook page called “Justice For Jumpolin Community Action” cropped up, and the group launched an email campaign to dissuade Splash, the party sponsor listed on city records, from going through with their event. On February 25, Splash CEO Ben Hindman, who also graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2007, issued a statement to the Facebook group assuring community members that Splash would be moving their party to another location. He swore that he knew nothing of F&F’s plans to raze the building in which Jumpolin was housed.
The party happened Saturday night at a new location, and was co-hosted by General Assembly, a combination tech school and start-up incubator headquartered in New York City that is launching its 13th campus in Austin this month. GA, which counts among its four founders an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, quietly arrived in Austin in December. The company has been working out of temporary locations until they move into permanent digs and begin providing full and part time classes at the end of March or early April. Though GA was billed as a co-sponsor of the party on the invitation, it has never been mentioned in the media coverage of the demolition. I mention it now to raise the point that much of Austin’s gentrification is fueled by rapid growth of a tech industry that recruits highly paid talent to Austin who have no historical ties to the community and plenty of money to spend. In fact, a recent study published by The Atlantic showed that the top ten economically segregated metro areas in America “reads like a who’s who of major knowledge economy centers,” with Austin coming in at number nine below number two Silicon Valley and number one Huntsville, Alabama.
Splash, a NYC-based event management website, is the tech darling behind hundreds of the corporate events held during SXSW. If you RSVP’d for a party at SXSW this year, you likely did it on a Splash event page.
That Splash and GA moved their party was a tiny victory for the community, but because F&F obtained a permit from the city to demolish the building, the Austin Police Department won’t file criminal charges against them. That means the only option the Lejarazus have is to sue F&F in civil court, which they are doing.
At a hearing on March 3, a Travis County judge issued an injunction halting any construction on the property at 1401 E. Cesar Chavez until the case is heard. The video of Sergio Lejarazu paying his February rent was one of the items presented during the hearing.
Justice For Jumpolin, along with other community activist groups, are calling for a boycott of F&F’s other businesses, appealing to SXSW attendees and other Austin tourists to boycott F&F’s rental properties listed on Airbnb at 93 Navasota and 206 San Marcos in Austin. The group is also calling for the county attorney to press charges against F&F.
On March 12, Texas State Representative Eddie Rodriguez, whose district includes the former Jumpolin site, filed a bill that would make it illegal to demolish property without notifying tenants.
“It’s such an unconscionable act, that the city had no reason to think that someone would lie on a demolition application,” Doran Peters said.
I guess innocence is another thing Austin is losing to gentrification.
This article originally appeared on Latina.com.