We received an email today from neighborhood resident Jan Jeffress, who was concerned about items consigned to Red Cat Consignment, 718 Buckner, in the shopping center behind Green Spot at North Buckner and Northcliff.
After receiving the email, I spoke with one of the Red Cat owners — Steven Hall — about the store, and here’s what he said: The landlord locked Hall and his wife, Marukh, out of the space at the end of the year due to non-payment of rent. Hall said that although he and his wife had tried to work with people who had consigned goods to the store, some were left out of the process and their items remained in the store after the lockout. And according to Hall, the landlord packed up everything in the store and sold it to satisfy the unpaid rent. Hall says both he and his wife have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and there’s nothing else he can do to help people who may not have retrieved their items before the store was closed — "they’re all sold," he says.
The complicating factor here, Jeffress says, is that she doesn’t have any paperwork supporting her claim of ownership; she says Red Cat picked up the items from her home but no trail of ownership was established. And in most cases, without paperwork showing that the Halls don’t own the property, the bankruptcy court and/or landlord will assume it’s the Hall’s property and sell it to satisfy their debt — and that appears to be what happened here.
When I explained this to Jeffress during a phone call, she had only this to say: "That’s what we were afraid of."
UPDATE: Vicky Gillispie, the property manager for Lake Highlands Village (the landlord) says Red Cat is current with the rent and wasn’t locked out of its space. Click here to read the complete update.
