The building is a gorgeous historic sturdy old greystone structure evaluated at a mere $1.1 million, even though it spans over 5,200 square feet in a pretty bustling part of town.
Lavy and Schiller, who are neighbours in Upper Westmount, recently went to court against a rule that no bar could open in the big building at the SE corner of St. Kitt and Plessis because it lost its acquired right after no bar occupied the premises for a year.
Neither attended the hearings, according to the court document.
Lavy came to public attention when an attempt to rebrand the Laurier BBQ with Gordon Ramsay ended up a $2.7 million lawsuit. Ramsay won, according to this court doc which doesn't provide final numbers. Lavy appears not to have suffered too much, as he purchased a famous art gallery in Miami last year for over $34M.
Shiller as many Montrealers will remember, fistpumped furiously in a series of kitschy TV commercials for their father's Venetian blind company Au Bon Marche. Shiller has owned considerable real estate - he may still own the building at 3614 St. Lawrence - but was still doing the blinds thing as of last year.
Lavy and Shiller own properties together including the Nautilus Plus building at 1431-1439 St. Andre, where a legal dispute led a judge to order them to pay $18,000 to an escalator company.
Anyway none of that is particularly relevant, other than to show that Lavy and Shiller are business guys busy with a lot of stuff and their attempt to get dancing going in the building that they purchased in 2005.
The parties fighting the application to get a disco going on the premises were - no big surprise here - direct competitors in the form of Unity Club owner, the lawyer Andre Bousquet and Sky Club owner Peter Sergakis, plus a couple of the mandatory noise-sensitive neighbours in the form of Pierre Sanscartier and Lise Beland.
In the 1990s the building was home to four discos known as K.O.X. famously raided in 1994 after police reporting that the activities inside were "poisoning the area." Zoning adjustments and further complaints led to the place closing in March 1998. The owners went belly-up and it was auctioned off to a numbered company represented by Marc Kakon and Daniel Meyer Ouaknine. and it stayed empty until January 2003.
The previous owners Yves Schulé, Pierre Becker et Jean-Michel Domage, had purchased the joint in April 2002 in hopes of turning into it into Station C "a meeting place at the crossroads of gays, artists, media, business personalities to make a jet set of opinion leaders,"
After Shiller and Lavy bought the building in June 2005 they rented a part of it to Patrick Legendre, supposedly a nightclub legend who sought to create a nightclub called Le Kloc, opened from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
A bar operated for a while but then lost its license and then another joint came in and a police report noted that "the space is used as a sex club and after hours establishment in spite of the lack of occupation certification for an all night dance facility. There's always noise complaints as well."
Something called teh Apollon Bar has been operating in part of the bar since 201. Its described a sex club." It too received noise complaints.