The owner of the Furniture Mart building is asking a court to order a former tenant to pay more than $84,000 in back rent and taxes.

Meritocracy Ventures Ltd., an LLC created by Arthur Bailey, local attorney and owner of the Furniture Mart building, filed a lawsuit Monday in state Supreme Court in Mayville alleging Data Listings Services LLC. of Burnsville, Minn., and Data Listing Services LLC, which did business as The Connection, owed Bailey tens of thousands of dollars for the company’s portion of the Furniture Mart building’s property taxes as well as part of the company’s rent for December 2018 and all of the rent for January, February, March and April 2019. The call center later moved to newly renovated space in the former Jamestown Post Office on Second Street after the building was purchased by Lynn Development.

“There are now existing and further developing ireconcilable disputes and legal issues between plaintiff and the above-named defendants now developing more rapidly and to such an extent that it now constitutes a ‘justiciable controversy,’ which can only be resolved by the court’s declaratory judgement decree, together with a trial of the issues and those certain separate actions for breach-of-lease/contract, and other pendent actions for ‘monies had-and-received,’ each being herewith commenced by this filing,” Bailey wrote in the lawsuit.

Bailey’s lawsuit alleges The Connection’s lease for space in the Furniture Mart building encompassed the entire fifth floor of the building, along with additional office space and access to common areas of the building. Part of that 2010 lease document is a clause that the tenant will pay each year, within 30 days of receiving an invoice, its share of real estate taxes on the building. Bailey argues the call center was due to pay 10% of the yearly property taxes since the call center occupied 10% of the space in the building. Bailey said in his legal filing that none of the company’s share of the taxes were ever paid despite The Connection officials saying the money had been held in an escrowed accounts payable to Bailey in the company’s internal records. Bailey is asking for $34,550.19 in back property taxes from 2010 through the date of the legal filing.

The lawsuit also alleges The Connection paid only $7,911.29 of its $11,484 monthly rent in December 2019 and then paid no rent from January through April 2019. That amount totals $49,508.71. Bailey said company officials justified withholding rent because The Connection paid for a new 10-story elevator for the Furniture Mart building, something Bailey contests while saying he could have had the work done by a competing elevator company for less cost.

“At approximately the latter portion of the same time frame, plaintiff/Meritocracy had disvcovered that defendant/Data Listing had ‘gone behind the plaintiff’s back’ and had arranged a sub rosa agreement with plaintiff’s regular elevator contractor, Bison Elevator Co. in Buffalo, N.Y., who had built and installed plaintiff’s 10-story ‘state-of-the-art’ elevator, which had the ‘highest and best’ Hollister-Whitney power and electronic controls and equipment at a cost of $267,000 prior to defendant’s initial lease in the ‘FMOB’ premesis and, rather incredibly, the plaintiff never would have invested this $267,000 in said ‘state-of-the-art’ elevator but for the fact it would lead to the ‘anchor lease’ with this very defendant/Data Listing. Shortly thereafter, defendants’ explained that the reason they had ‘withheld and refused to pay’ said four months (plus) of rents was so that they, ‘the tenant,’ not ‘the owner,’ culd have better service from the said nearly new aforesaid plaintiff’s 10-story elevator,” Bailey wrote.

The Lynn Development Group announced in April 2018 that it had agreed to a long-term lease agreement with The Connection, which will keep the employer local for the foreseeable future and provide for significant upgrades that will benefit both entities. The Lynn Development Group’s 10-year lease included the relocation of The Connection’s offices from its home in the Furniture Mart building to the Lynn building — the former Jamestown Post Office building at 301 E. Second St. — sometime in the fall of 2018. Negotiations surrounding the agreement had been in the works for some time and involved support from government officials at varying levels — including former Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi, then Chautauqua County Executive George Borrello and state Sen. Cathy Young.

Fred Weiner, founder and chief executive officer of The Connection, said in 2018 he was pleased with the agreement and looked forward to furthering his company’s relationship with Lynn Development. Weiner expressed his satisfaction that the new space within the Lynn building will be centrally located on one floor, and will not require elevator access in order to move throughout the entirety of The Connection’s offices.

“I’m excited for this opportunity to continue operations in Jamestown from within a beautiful building,” Weiner said. “The Furniture Mart has served its purpose for many years, but there was nothing on the horizon to indicate that we could move forward with enticing prospective clients and growing our operation at that location. The new space Lynn Development is putting together for us will help facilitate those things, and we want to thank everyone at all levels who assisted us in finding a solution.”