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A CIGAR STORE WAS RAZED, FOR WHAT? |
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 Plus: A cigar-smoking President? Oui!
Los Angeles, June 21 – “Two years ago, bulldozers level Ahmad Mesdaq’s cigar shop on Fifth Avenue and J Street in the Gaslamp Quarter to make way for a hotel. To this day, the land taken from Mesdaq by the city of San Diego using eminent domain remains a flat parking lot instead of the 12-story luxury hotel the construction of which was scheduled to begin earlier this year.”
That’s the start of Tuesday’s story on the independent news site, VoiceofSanDiego.com lamenting the destruction of a well-run business to the controversial eminent domain powers of local governments under a 2005 Supreme Court decision called Kelo v. City of New London.
But in addition to the question of whether eminent domain was appropriate, it’s also worth asking whether – and no one will say – whether the fact that Mesdaq’s business was a tobacco shop contributed to the decision to take it by force of law.
The developer bought the land from the city for $10 million, but nothing has happened yet and a new schedule is being created for the hotel to open in 2010. The request for an extension to the schedule will be heard on June 27.
In the meantime, Mesdaq hasn’t been sleeping. A political refugee from Afghanistan, he created some small restaurant properties in the popular Gaslamp Quarter and, he says, bought a warehouse-style building for $1.3 million in 2000 and then spent another $2.5 million to create the Gran Havana Cigar & Coffee Shop which opened in 2003.
“I’m not a rich guy,” he told reporter Nina Petersen-Perlman. “I borrowed millions and millions of dollars. I spent $2 million to renovate.”
But barely a year later, in 2004, the building was condemned by eminent domain when Mesdaq refused to sell. The city offered $3.1 million for the property and suggested other sites, including a basement property in a much less-trafficked location that was only a fraction of his existing space.
Not satisfied at all, Mesdaq sued the city and won a judgement for $7.8 million in November of 2005 and an additional $1.4 million for attorney’s fees in June of 2006. The matter is still on appeal and Mesdaq added a further cross-appeal of his own on the city’s ability to take the land by eminent domain. A hearing on the appeal should take place this summer.
In the meantime, one of the few smokeshops in San Diego and a popular one in the heart of the city’s entertainment district wasn’t simply shuttered. It was torn down.
Will Mesdaq rebuild and re-open, even if he wins? His fixtures are in storage and he told the Web site, “Destroying one business and putting [in] another business that doesn’t exist, that’s not how government should run.”
A victory for Mesdaq will be important not simply on the eminent domain issue, but also for smokers, since it will establish that even a cigar store – despite the anti-tobacco frenzy in California – is not subject to condemnation just because a developer offers a business that bureaucrats like better.
Cast your ballot for . . .
Speaking of government and with the 2008 national elections not so far away, there are some candidates for the Presidency who are smokers, or know one:
• On the Democratic side, wunderkind Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is a cigarette smoker who says he wants to quit and is reportedly trying.
• Fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton is married to a smoker (you remember him, don’t you?), but while living in the White House, she enforced a no-smoking policy inside the building that sent her husband/President outdoors when he was actually smoking his cigars.
• Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani of New York is a well-known and long-time cigar lover.
• Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado is a cigar smoker of the first stripe and was part of a dust-up over smoking in his office with an aide to a Representative in the next office. Tancredo continues to smoke and enjoys Perdomo Reserve cigars among others.
• Undeclared but possible Republican candidate Fred Thompson of Tennessee is a cigar smoker as well and reportedly has a preference for Cuban cigars . . . when he can get them. He’s been shown smoking in many of his film and television appearances and had a cigar in hand in his brilliant video retort to a challenge by filmmaker Michael Moore to a debate.
On the other side is the possible independent candidature of billionaire ex-Republican Michael Bloomberg, currently the Mayor of New York. A former smoker, he is virulently anti-tobacco and not only pushed through the New York smoking ban, but promised $125 million of his own fortune to “help” push the anti-tobacco message worldwide.
New French President on cigars: Oui!
Perhaps the world is turning in the direction of cigar smokers after all.
New French President Nicolas Sarkozy (pictured above) was on the defensive for a moment yesterday after he appeared out of breath and unsteady during a June 8 news conference near the close of the G-8 economic summit in Germany, leading worldwide media to suggest that he was drunk. He says he was out of breath.
Sarkozy said he only saw the video last Monday, when his family was laughing hysterically at it at home in a Paris suburb. But during his Wednesday news conference in Paris, according to London’s The Telegraph:
“Clearly pleased with the nomination of his expanded 33-member government and his first six weeks in power, Mr Sarkozy puffed on a cigar, saying ‘I am relaxed. If I’m not, I don’t smoke. It gives me a headache.’”
The political leader of a G-8 country, smoking a cigar in public! Holy Winston Churchill! Vive Sarkozy!
~ Rich Perelman
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