After opening in July, Santa Barbara business owner Val Selvaggio was shocked when she got the email on August 31 that her store’s lease in Paseo Nuevo mall had been terminated. Her shop, Xanadu Skate Boutique, had only been open for five weeks.
“They gave me a 60-day notice,” Selvaggio said. She explained that the notice was in accordance with a clause in her lease agreement, but she did not expect for her time in Paseo to end so soon.
“The reason was that they supposedly found another renter that wanted a permanent deal there, and it was going to pay almost three times the amount of what I paid, and that was never offered to me,” she said. “I basically got kicked out.”