Page 4 of 5
Five days later, Ferguson was served with an eviction complaint. But no one from Vantaggio Suites showed up for the April 16 hearing. The matter was dismissed.
By April 22, there was another notice issued to Ferguson. This one stated that she owed $1,800. The following day, Ferguson offered to pay $1,200 for March and April, the two months for which she believed she owed rent. But Vantaggio was not willing to accept it, she says. In fact, an altercation between Assistant Manager Schlottman and Ferguson ensued. It is memorialized in a report by police called to the scene.
A new complaint is filed against Ferguson on May 9, claiming that she owes $3,775, dating all the way back to July 1996. The attorney handling the case for the Itos is David Mendez. A veteran of the cottage industry spawned by San Francisco's rental market, Mendez has long represented such downtown property owners as residential hotel king Charlie Patel in tenant removal.
In the minutes before a hearing on the eviction suit begins, Ferguson and Mendez meet. Discussion, if you can call it that, ensues. Terse voices echo all the way down the sterile government hall-way in the temporary building that houses San Francisco's Civil Court.
"I'm authorized to accept something less if you plan to leave," the lawyer says, "depending on when you vacate the premises."
The voices grow louder, enough to make heads turn from in front of the elevator. Everyone seems to recognize the unmistakable vernacular of eviction.
"I'm not going to settle with you when I don't owe this money," Ferguson fires back.
"If you plan to stay, I need to see some money," Mendez says, clearly irked by the lack of progress here.
"You don't get it," counters Ferguson, who is neatly dressed in a business suit. "I don't owe the $3,000, and I want to go to court."
Emotions escalate, and this verbal sparring match continues from the hallway into the courtroom.
"You'd better come up with something," Mendez says. "The judge is going to want to see something."
Mendez takes a seat next to a petite woman in the back of the room and begins a conversation in courtroom whispers. She is his client, Ito's wife, Clare Blouin-Ito.
Ferguson sits a few rows up, next to the neighbor she's brought along for the occasion. The looks and the whispers continue while everyone waits for the judge to arrive, for the show to begin.
The judge orders the matter to trial the following month. But, for a second time, the eviction is dismissed.
In a June 5 letter, Ito explains, "because our key witness is out of the country and cannot testify on some of our records we have no choice but to dismiss this case."
Ito also suggests "sitting with a third party" to seek an amiable way to settle the matter. But Ferguson had had enough. In late June, she filed a civil lawsuit against Ito alleging harassment and discrimination. That case is still pending.
Ito refuses to discuss the details of the Ferguson case. But he insists that the bookkeeping in the building was in such a confusing state when he took over that no one could make sense out of it, which is why the figures in Ferguson's notices kept changing.
"I don't want this to be an excuse for people not to pay rent," says Ito. "People have to take responsibility. Landlords need protection too."
Furthermore, he says, Mendez filed court papers with mistakes in them, which caused the Itos to have to dismiss the case. They have since dismissed Mendez. Schlottman also is gone.
But the soap opera continues.
Shortly after she joined her husband in the management of San Francisco's new Vantaggio Suites, Claire Blouin-Ito, a slight, unmistakably French woman with dark hair that frames a soft, round face cut in half by Yber-mod glasses, became intimately familiar with life inside 835 Turk St.
"The conditions were terrible," she says. "The units were not rentable. The outside, it was almost raw."
Blouin-Ito did not work with her husband in San Diego, staying home to raise their son. Clearly well-educated, the woman whom tenants have taken to commonly calling "The French Mrs. Ito" seems to serve as the closest thing Vantaggio Suites has to a conduit between the old tenants, the new students from around the globe, her businessman husband, and the Rent Board. It is far from an ideal situation.
"Tension was so awful. So stressful," she says of the charged air when she arrived at the Gotham. "The atmosphere became more calm [after meeting with tenants]. Of course, people were not completely happy. When you do renovation, it's not as peaceful."
But there's a little more to it than that.
The interior of the Gotham had a theme that might be described as "tired elegance"; its soft, gray-and-peach color scheme accented a decidedly art deco history. The place was generally clean, but definitely worn.
The renovated Vantaggio Suites, on the other hand, is big on new, nice, and clean, and fairly intolerant of things that are not. Blouin-Ito still shudders over the cockroach carcasses stabbed with thumbtacks, found after a resident moved out. Who knows what might have happened had she been around a few years earlier, when one of the residents trashed his room because he thought the devil was speaking to him from the glassware.
By late spring, the Itos had painted the lobby and hallways stark white, and the decorative trim around the ceilings was a medley of bright blue, orange, and mustard. New royal blue carpeting had been laid in the hallways. And the doors of each floor had been painted different colors that corresponded to the medley around the lobby ceiling.
