Former grill owners told to pay up

Derry

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July 16, 2008

By Eric Parry

BRENTWOOD — The former owners of a downtown restaurant have been ordered to pay their neighbors more than $130,000 for harming a real estate business and an apartment building next door.

Robert and Bonnie Hall operated the FireHall Pub & Grille restaurant for almost two years, but the former fire house closed its doors last September and was sold to a mortgage company at an auction sale in February for $750,000. They have been ordered by Rockingham County Superior Court Judge John Lewis, according to a June 30 order, to pay Steve Trefethen, who owns commercial and residential property at 44 West Broadway, $131,140.

That amount is to cover loss of rent, snow removal costs and legal fees that Trefethen has encumbered over the last two years, according to the order.

Trefethen sued the Halls in 2007 after the couple breached two contracts agreed upon by the two parties.

The first contract was from 2005 and concerned noise and privacy protection for an apartment building at 40 West Broadway.

The second contract was a purchase and sale agreement from July 3, 2006, for $1.1 million with $450,000 being paid for the business, $150,000 for the equipment and $500,000 for the land and building.

Thomas Grodt, Trefethen's attorney, said in December that he and Trefethen had been working with the Halls to negotiate privacy, parking and snow removal for the neighbors who live in the adjacent buildings since the first contract.

Grodt could not be reached for comment this week.

Trefethen attempted to stop the foreclosure sale of the building earlier this year by filing an injunction in Rockingham County Superior Court and was given 30 days to purchase the building for $1.1 million.

He declined to purchase the building, and it was sold to Avatar Income Funds 1 after being foreclosed on by Wells Fargo. The property is being marketed by Jackman Commercial Realty Inc. and is listed on their Web site for $825,000.

For more than a century, the restaurant was a fire station but was made into a restaurant after the town no longer needed the building. It was purchased by the Halls for $375,000 and was remodeled to be a restaurant on the lower floor and a piano bar upstairs, keeping a firefighting theme throughout the building.

Over the past two years, the restaurant was the subject of litigation filed by neighbors from a different building owned by Property Portfolio Group. The neighbors claimed that the town's process to approve the site as a place of business wasn't legal, and that the restaurant had driven tenants from the apartments.