A deal to bring a restaurant and seafood market to the Columbus Marina has fallen through.
Ajax LLC owner Thomas Genin, who was attempting to purchase the former Woody’s on the Water building, told The Dispatch he has backed out of the deal after several disagreements and delays on a lease with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Lowndes County Port Authority for the property on which the building sits.
Genin, who also owns the Blind Tiger, an open-air bar and restaurant in Bay St. Louis, had been working with the corps and the port authority since February to iron out a lease before he would close on a separate deal with the city of Columbus to purchase the building itself, located at 233 Marina Drive. The corps owns the land and leases it to the port authority, which itself subleases to tenants such as the adjacent marina.
The city has owned the structure since February 2020, receiving it as a gift from then-owner John Young.
But after several delays on the lease, disagreements over operating hours, dimensions of a seafood market below the restaurant and how he would have paid rent on the space, Genin gave notice to the city and port authority that he was no longer interested, he said.
“It (the rent) was a percentage of gross sales; in wholesale seafood, that would have made it very rough and risky. The more the sales, the higher the percentage of the gross,” Genin said Friday morning, though he would not disclose any other lease details.
Genin’s attorney, Lindsay Clemons, notified the port authority and city on Oct. 17 that Genin was no longer interested in the property. Clemons said the restrictive nature of working with the corps and the back-and-forth over the eight-month period eventually led to the conclusion that the deal was not conducive to the idea Genin had for the space.
“The bottom line is that their mission (the corps) is in preserving and maintaining the waterways in that area and are not necessarily, in this particular instance, conducive to the type of business and facility that Genin and his investors wanted to have there,” Clemons said.
Port authority attorney John Crowell and the Army Corps Office of Counsel and District Office, which worked to secure the final lease agreement, did not respond to calls from The Dispatch for comment by press time.
With the lease agreement for the land and subsequent deal with the city now dead in the water, The Columbus Redevelopment Authority has been tasked with marketing the former restaurant and the board will meet Wednesday to discuss the matter.
CRA president Marthalie Porter said its board will work with the corps and the port authority to secure a new buyer and sees no issues moving forward.
“We have a good working relationship with the corps and the port,” Porter said. “They both are interested in seeing the building have a tenant in there. … We’ve had local real estate people contact us (in the past) when they’ve had someone interested. So I’m sure that will continue.”
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