The landlords of a popular beer garden in Del Ray have dropped their eviction lawsuit against their tenants.
Despite the win, Jeremy Barber and Justus Frank, the owners of The Garden (1503 Mount Vernon Avenue), are still suing their landlords at Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC, and plan to go back to Alexandria Circuit Court in October.
“What it means is that we’re not going anywhere anytime soon,” Barber told ALXnow. “I would love to keep the place open as long as the neighborhood will have us. I’m not sure what the future holds, but I can at least tell you that we’re going to keep on working a little more to try to make it so that that place stays in that community one way or another.”
Stratis and Georgia Voutsas are the principals of Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC. They filed their eviction lawsuit in the city’s General District Court soon after Barber and Frank filed their suit.
Barber said that he and his partner were notified earlier this week that Twenty-Third Street Corridor would drop its case and made a 10-minute court appearance as a formality.
Georgia Voutsas and her attorney Mark Friedlander declined to comment to ALXnow.
Last August, Barber and Frank filed a lawsuit in the Alexandria Circuit Court against Twenty-Third Street Corridor LLC for not honoring the five-year renewal option on their lease, which expired last November. The landlords went so far as to list the property available for rent on Sept. 1, two months before The Garden’s lease expired.
The Garden reopened Friday, Feb. 27, after being closed during most of the winter. Barber said it was their best opening weekend ever.
“It was amazing,” Barber said. “It was a record-breaking first opening weekend. It was the best we’ve ever had.”
Since their lease expired, Barber says he and Frank pay $5,400 a month in rent, about $1,400 more than their $4,000-per-month lease.
Georgia Voustas previously told ALXnow that Barber and Frank took advantage of her and her husband and that the rent wasn’t raised for five years. They also said that the property went into disrepair.
“They violated the terms of our lease, allowed the place to fall into disrepair to the point where it even threatened the health of the patrons,” Voustas said. “Then they tried to shake us down for tens of thousands of dollars to force us to make the repairs that they were responsible for under a triple net lease.”
Barber and Frank told ALXnow that after a deal to buy the property fell through in 2024, their landlord spent the next seven months trying to evict them with default notices on property repair issues.
Barber and Frank also own Mill Street Draft Garden in Occoquan and employ about 30 people between the two businesses.
Barber says that he would still like to work out a long-term deal with his landlord.
“I would love to see, in three to five years, something completely change and the landlord, “Barber said, “and Justis and I get back on the same page and then come to an agreement … to stay there.”
Barber wanted to thank customers for their support over the last several months.
“The community support has been overwhelming,” he said. “It does kind of show us that we are [a] staple. We’ve done something in that neighborhood that hasn’t been done there a long time.”
