Ring said that he allowed Carlton to stop paying her rent until an agreed-upon date when she would be open and operational, but when the time came she was not open. He started eviction procedures, took her to court and won his unlawful-detainer action against her. As for Carlton’s civil suit and its allegations, Ring said he was never notified about it.
Several Deauville tenants were also critical of how Marina II and its property managers went about raising rents on lease renewals starting in October 1998, but spoke off the record because they are still living there. One tenant said he had a two-year verbal lease that was switched to a month-to-month with a $195 increase by the management. Another said that when she asked management what her increase would be when her lease expired in May, she was told the increases were "just a rumor." But she recently received an increase as well.
"To tell you a month before your rent is going up $250 to $500 is just indecent," said the tenant. "You’re really stuck."
Ring said Marina II is simply raising the rents to their fair-market value.
"I have found there are tenants who have had no increases in three to five years," Ring said. "We’re playing catch-up."
One former tenant who moved away earlier this year after the rent increases said she was cheated by Ring’s managers at the Deauville Apartments and plans to sue. Rose Dolfi said she had agreed to a yearlong renewal of her lease in September of 1998 with a $55 increase per month. In October of 1998 Deauville stopped offering annual leases; Dolfi learned of the new policy via a note slipped under her door notifying her of a $185 monthly increase. Ring said that he knew nothing about the situation.
"The manager said I had no lease and my rent was going up, and if you don’t like it, move," Dolfi said. "They don’t get how upsetting losing your home is, and they don’t care. I had a deal and it was in writing, and they told me it disappeared."
Dolfi said she had not received her own copy of the yearlong lease, however, and when she had brought her previous complaints to Beaches and Harbors, she was referred by a staff member to John Rizzo — the tenant activist, who doesn’t work for the county and is usually filing complaints of his own.
"It’s like you can’t get at these guys," Dolfi said. Rizzo agreed during a recent interview. He said he routinely gets calls from tenants who say their complaints to the Small Craft and Harbor Commission are ignored. "The boaters and people living in the apartments complain, and the SCHC reaction is to stonewall everything."
One Bar Harbor tenant did find an attorney willing to take on her case from the start, and managed to successfully fight the group in court in 1998. Earlier in the year, Ring’s managers decided to collect more than $800 in late fees that they had ignored in the past, and took Barbara Gilliam to court after disputes over the fees and her rent. Gilliam fought the move with the help of attorney Robert Schell, a lawyer who publishes a small biweekly newspaper in the marina area called The Baywatcher.
During the case, Schell filed a motion to dismiss that disputed Marina II’s ability to sue. He argued that the death of a general partner dissolves a partnership under California law unless arrangements have been filed to deal with the situation. Marina II’s original partnership certificate, filed in 1984, lists the three original general partners — Selden Ring, Irving Axelrad and Alan Robbins. The certificate does not mention any arrangements for such an incident, and states that future amendments would require the acknowledgment of all three partners.
The only amendment on file with the secretary of state at the time was from November of 1998, when Doug Ring listed his DR9 Co. as the sole general partner, with a note attached stating that Axelrad, Selden Ring and Alan Robbins were no longer general partners. The only signature was Doug Ring’s. Schell’s motion that this amendment was bogus — leaving Marina II unable to sue — was approved by the judge, and the case was dismissed. Just what this means for Marina II’s future deals is uncertain, but it doesn’t seem to have hindered lease-extension negotiations. Ring said he didn’t know anything about the decision.
Doug Ring seems to have enough lobbyist savvy and political muscle to steer Marina II through this latest period in its rocky history. So far he hasn’t had to break a sweat, judging by an outside evaluation committee’s recommendation, a unanimous recommendation from the Small Craft Harbor Commission, and county-supervisor approval for the county to enter lease-extension negotiations with Marina II. The committee even praised Ring’s proposal, based on recommendations from staff at the Department of Beaches and Harbors, for "the demonstrated project management, property management, and marketing experience of the Proposer."
So negotiations plow onward for Ring and others trying to hold on to their leases for the better part of the next century. Officials said that with each request, the leaseholder’s development proposals are studied and weighed against what the county might get if it waited and put the lease out for competitive bidding. But it appears that, in the case of Doug Ring and Marina II, some concerns are being left out of the equation.
