I cannot recommend renting from the landlord known as David Zavetsky. I know people who have rented residential and commercial from the man behind LYDA LLC, David G. Zavetsky, with detrimental results, but I’ll write only of my own experience. Those stories are theirs to tell. I’ll also clarify some of the nasty, false statements stated by David Zavetsky.
David Zavetsky is a lazy landlord. OK, so he just wants to own real estate, and sit back and collect checks. I can’t fault him for that, but it’s not how the world works. Property and relationships need be maintained. I rented from David for around 5 years, and had few problems, because the rent check was always there.
The real problems started after I signed the lease to move into 25 Main St. As I said, he’s a little lazy with details. First, the floor plan was wrong. It was a big deal in this case, because I was renting the space with a co-tenant.
The lease had to be modified because of his mistake. To make matters worse, the building was stuck by a SUV and was damaged. Repairs had to be made, and it took months after we moved in to 25 Main St. to complete repairs.
Meanwhile, the co-tenants, and the bookstore had a nasty divorce. I’ve always heard to never go into business with friends or family, but I work with my wife. We had known Julian for several years. He rented a corner in our basement store at 87 Main St. He seemed like a good guy. We started game nights together. It was a sound business relationship. We invited and encouraged him to rent space in the building at 25 Main Street. I don’t like to throw the word synergy around, but I used it.
It ended up being a horrible idea. You know how some married men are completely different people with their wife around? That’s Julian. Neither my wife nor I really knew her. She never came into the store, never came to game night. We didn’t know her, and once we got to know her. We just didn’t like her.
Anja is really a difficult person. Most of us can be at times, but she seemed to go out of her way. Everything from the color of the paint we used to the nature of my relationship with my wife, to comments about my wife’s bipolar disorder.
I guess I should have known something was off when we looked through where the former Enchanted Hollow used to be located. They were located upstairs at 25 Main St, and when I dream, I dream big. I was interested in maybe renting that space for writer’s group, author signings etc.
We were shown the rooms after the business was closed for the day. I love the Enchanted Hollow. It truly feels magical. I loved going through it and thinking how we would use the space once they relocated to the corner that they now are open at.
Anja wouldn’t even walk through the room that Willow gave her tarot card readings in. I thought this was a little weird, but tarot cards aren’t new to me. We sell them. I’ve had a reading. I don’t take it real serious, and consider tarot cards as tools to self-discovery at best, and usually just items of artwork.
OK, so what? She’s super conservative. Everyone has the right to be what they are, but it was like mixing oil and water. The bookstore isn’t conservative. We sell all kinds of books. We even have a GLBT section, and have had one for years. Anyone who is over 40 and grew up in Wellsboro knows that takes a certain amount of chutzpah. Some people don’t like it.
Still not a problem until the Stams decided to do whatever it took to get us evicted. Yes, David Zavetsky is a lazy, lout of a landlord, but he mostly just wants to keep the checks and the quiet coming. He was still willing to let us stay, even after the eviction notice was given. We were almost at an agreement, but the Stams just wouldn’t stand for it.
One of the documents shows that my wife, Kasey, took fruit snacks, and paid a dollar is restitution. As long as I’m writing a novel, let me explain a little about that. My wife isn’t a thief, and who would steal fruit snacks? As I said, we went into this building with our co-tenants as friends, or at least sound business partners.
Julian, the owner of Pop’s Culture, invited us to help ourselves to items from the small fridge downstairs. Now, this was before the Great Divorce. I knew we were not friends any more, but that’s just to give you a sense of what the relationship was like before it went bad.
My wife has some medical problems. She doesn’t try to hide it. She had bipolar disorder. It’s slow cycling, which mostly means it’s manageable with medication and care. She also sometimes has some blood sugar problems. She’ll have an incident every once in awhile.
Julian knows this. He’s actually seen it for himself. He actually held orange juice to her lips while she was shaking and having what looked like a seizure to me, while I called 911. I hate it when my wife has these. I always feel so powerless.
My wife doesn’t even remember taking the fruit snack. For those of you that have had these low blood sugar incidents, you probably don’t even remember them. My wife doesn’t. My friend Jen who has type one diabetes seldom remembers anything that happens during these. Your brain runs on glucose. If there’s a problem with your glucose, there’s going to be a problem with memory.
She wasn’t even charged with theft, but a form of trespass and charged a dollar for restitution, which she paid. We probably should have fought that. She has medical tests where the hospital was trying to find out the source of the problem. It’s not diabetes. I guess that we never thought anyone could be such a despicable person to use that as an excuse to evict someone. I mean if she was going to steal something why chose fruit snacks that weren’t even worth a dollar?
On LYDA’s page, there’s also a police incident report about some games. By the way, these aren’t secret court documents. They are a matter of public record. In September, of 2012, I was getting ready to leave the store. Kasey had left, and I was going to turn off the air conditioning for the night. The thermostat at that time was between spaces rented by the bookstore, and our co-tenant. There was this little “glory hole” that I could reach in to reach the controls. This corner was where we used to have the Pepsi machine. Those of you that know me know I’m not a small guy. I never was, and frankly I’ve gotten fat working at a sedentary desk job.
I bumped into the hastily erected dividing wall, and some games fell off on the other side. I didn’t really think much of it. We sell some games, and they fall of the shelves sometimes. They are packaged well and enclosed in plastic. It seldom hurts them. They aren’t made of glass. It’s not like I was going to call the Stams anyway. We were no longer friends.
The wall I bumped was built without my permission. The owners of Pop’s Culture in fact trespassed to build the diving wall in the middle of the night on a Saturday when the bookstore was closed.
I know they trespassed, because I saw an email from Julian to David Zavetsky saying they had to move some of my shelves to do it, which were all in my space, and thus he had to trespass in order to do it. Also, the door in our space that leads to the cellar was marked with tape when we left for the night, and it was broken, letting me know the door had been opened.
I had suspected that someone was using that door after we closed. Actually, I didn’t think it was Julian at the time. Our spaces were connected at one time, and Julian held game nights long after the bookstore was closed for the night. One Saturday morning, we arrived to find our front door unlocked.
Our door locks from the outside with a key. I think one of the attendants of game night decided to leave through the front door instead of the side door that Pop’s Culture uses. I blamed Julian for this, not because I think he allowed it, but because he just doesn’t have much control over groups of older boys.
I demanded some way to make the space secure, but I never authorized a wall. I never said I would build a wall. I thought about blocking him from Main Street, a great source of walk in and tourist traffic, but I thought that would be too cruel to do even to a man that I know longer considered a friend.
So, the police came about the games, I paid for the damages. Much like if you had broken something in a store and that was the end of it. There were no criminal charges filed. I paid for being the proverbial bull in a china shop.
This incident and the great fruit snack controversy was the majority of the basis for having me evicted. Oh, there was the not having trash in the right spot, not having my insurance on file(which he had from before, as he was my landlord at 87 Main St) and a utilities check I had not paid yet. See, we split the utilities bills here with Pop’s Culture, but the lease did not specify when I was to pay the Stam’s(they put them both in their name), or where the trash went.
The Stams demanded the lease be changed to arrange these, and it was done by the landlord and agreed to by me. So, those were not lease violations as they were not specified in the lease, and once they were, I always followed the lease.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed. You can Google the result yourself; just type in Kevin Coolidge and Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the decision will come up. In Pennsylvania in order to be in material breach of the lease, you must meet five criteria, and I did NOT meet any. Also, in my case, there were three judges, and all three judges decided in my favor.
One of those judges even questioned the opposing attorney if this case should even be here in court, and another judge said that the police would never even have responded to such a call. The decision calls the case “petty” My landlord should never have served an eviction. I should never had to defend myself in court.
This situation was handled poorly by everyone involved, some more than others. I know I am not always a diplomat, and my wife and I sought the help of someone more experienced in these matters. We approached Terry Ginn, an attorney in town who has specific training in mediation techniques. The owners of Pop’s Culture and our landlord refused this offer.
They wanted us out and they didn’t care how. I’ve read emails that were subpoenaed that show that Julian was interested in renting the space that From My Shelf Books occupied, and certain behaviors led me to believe this before it was confirmed by these emails.
If you come into the bookstore, you will see what many refer to as the Berlin Wall. It reaches maybe ¾ of the way to the ceiling. Why only that much? It doesn’t reach to the ceiling and it does not block the sound coming from the Pop’s Culture business. The bookstore isn’t a library, but a bookstore is a quiet environment. It’s now obvious that the wall was not supposed to be up for very long.
The owners of the game store cry “harassment” but there is no harassment from the bookstore. Julian cried harassment when I started to diversify my inventory, as every successful bookstore has in the last several years. Yet it was Pop’s Culture that started selling many of the same products as the bookstore does, as soon as they were opened for business.
Anyone who has been in the bookstore when events have been going on in the game store can decide for themselves about harassment. Ask our New York Time best seller visitor Carolyn Turgeon, and what the response was when an attending Mansfield professor went over to ask the owners of Pop’s Culture to quiet down.
We tried to find solutions. If the dividing wall was built higher, or with quality materials, or a little sound proofing, it would solve the noise problem. The landlord wants nothing to do with anything that makes his life a little harder, even though the bookstore has always paid rent on time and a valuable anchor on Main Street.
Now he’s a bad landlord and he served an eviction notice that should not have been served? It’s not the first time. Hell, I’m not sure I would be a good landlord. We won in court and no material breach of the lease was found, but it’s the things he’s done after that eviction notice was done that made him into a terrible landlord.
The eviction notice was what he called “frontloaded” It was full of nonsense that was meant to scare us, and make us just leave instead of fight what I knew was not a breach of the lease. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t pretend to be, but I having a bookstore, I do read, and my wife is the daughter of a lawyer.
What he fails to mention on his Facebook page is any of the many dirty things he did. He does his awkward best to make us sound like criminals where no criminal charges exist. He fails to mention the “anonymous” letter making fun of my wife’s bipolar and calling me a “nancy boy” an antiquated term for a homosexual male. It would be funny if it wasn’t so creepy. I’m not homophobic. In fact, the bookstore has a quiet reputation of being safe for the gay community. Anyone with Psychology 101 under their belt has to wonder what dresses are in Mr. Zavetsky’s closet?
He tried to evict our cat Hobo. Hobo is no longer with us, but he was a local celebrity and a main attraction for our store. He was with us at 87 Main Street, and he was with us at 25 Main St. We have a wooden statue out front of him, he has his own book, and people knew of him from all over the country.
Now this cat “eviction” came when several other businesses and tenants in the same building had animals. The Enchanted Hollow has Luna, a very nice, if not as famous cat as Hobo, and the Mountain Home Magazine upstairs has several dogs, one who had to wear a diaper in his elder years.
Our lawyer set him straight, but it just shows how low this landlord was willing to go, and I haven’t listed everything. I might add to this list in the future, but I want to get this up on my blog and as a review on his Facebook page. I’ve had reports from supporters that he is Facebooking and emailing everyone who signs the petition, and I wanted to respond
I’m not going to respond to his comments. I’ve tried engaging this man with not so good results. Several of my close friends and supporters have, and you can read his garbled, poorly constructed replies for yourself. If you are an English teacher, I encourage you NOT to do that, or you will be forced to break out the red marker.
Those of you that know me personally know I’m not the best diplomat, though I’m a loyal friend. I’ve made mistakes during this time. Running a small business under the best of times is a challenge, and I’ve been stressed. I’ve yelled when I shouldn’t have, though I wanted to punch someone. So, it really was the better choice.
Friends are friends and business is business. I rented from LYDA because I needed a place to house From My Shelf Books. I don’t want to deal with this ridiculous and petty little man, but moving will cost me money. My business plan is based on walk-in and tourist traffic. The current location is a perfect location for a bookstore.
This landlord owns at least three building on Main Street, and he told me that he was going to “poison the well” against me by talking to other landlords and advising them not to rent to me. His actions are not the actions of a man that just wants to get rid of a bad renter. His actions are the actions of a man with a vendetta. The actions of a man who wants to destroy my business. It’s not the first, and from what I’ve heard through the grapevine,it's not the last business he is doing that to.
My goal with this petition is not so much to change this landlord’s mind. I’m not sure anything could do that. If he can’t see through his hate to the good business sense of having a bookstore that not only pays the rent, but adds value to his property, and the town he live in, then I don’t see what will change his mind.
My goal is to get media coverage, real media coverage. There’s a story here. Not just my story, but they story of the people this landlord has hurt. There’s the story of a little bookstore that just wanted to sell books in their hometown--a town that didn't have a bookstore when I was growing up, and didn't have one when we started. It’s the story of an underdog, that doesn’t want to believe the American dream is dead.
I would very much appreciate it if you would sign the petition. You can find it
here. Sharing this would also be appreciated. I started a fundraising campaign to help us recover the senseless courtcase our landlord dragged us through. You can find that
here We are actually almost 2/3 of the way to our goal, and paying our lawyer back.
I really feel we have a case of taking our landlord to court. He hasn't just tried to evict me. He's trying to bankrupt me, and destroy my character, but I should probably pay my lawyer off first. Anything you can do to help will be appreciated. Everyone at
From My Shelf Books thanks you. The owners, the staff, and even Huck & Finn, the bookstore cats.
