Race tensions deepen in Savannah entertainment district

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Posted 8:26AM on Sunday, April 28, 2002

SAVANNAH - A dispute between landlords in the downtown Savannah entertainment district and a black nightclub intensified last week when the landlords filed a defamation lawsuit against the nightclub owners. The owners of Malone's Food and Spirits nightclub in the City Market area have accused the landlords of trying to shut Malone's down because it plays urban music and draws black patrons. Rapper Jayson Jones filed a discrimination lawsuit in federal court in March, claiming City Market Associates has a pattern of denying black musical acts permission to perform in the outdoor courtyard. City Market Associates recently terminated Malone's 10-year lease, saying the bar has never made rental payments on the first of the month and has broken other lease terms. Landlords claimed in court filings last week that owners of Malone's have manufactured charges of racism to deflect attention from their inability to pay rent on time. The dispute has drawn widespread attention in Savannah, where some blacks complain that white businessmen conspire to keep hip-hop clubs away from areas frequented by tourists. Earlier this month, Savannah City Manager Michael Brown appointed a team to investigate whether City Market Associates discriminate in the kinds of musicians they allow to play on the closed two-block street they lease from the city. Brown's findings indicated that City Market's courtyard practices were discriminatory. The landlords' suit, filed last week, asks Superior Court Judge Perry Brannen to evict Malone's and to grant the landlords damages for defamation. An attorney for the landlords, Ron Berry, portrays the owners of Malone's as troublesome tenants who openly broke the rules and thought they could get away with it because they paid the highest rent in City Market, at $12,100 per month. When landlords decided enough was enough, Malone's owner started talking about racism to ``stir up discontent and suspicion by the city and the public at large with regard to City Market,'' Berry said. In almost 100 pages of documents, Berry paints Tommy Tompkins as a man who sees racism everywhere he turns. The suit catalogs earlier problems, and highlights one that began last fall. In October 2001, police had been barricading the west end of a street which runs past Malone's. Police later stopped the practice, and when the barricades were lifted, City Market partner Peter Tulloch asked Malone's to help ease congestion by using its off-duty police officers to reroute traffic back to the once closed street. ``When (Tulloch) tried to correct the problem, defendants threatened to allege (he) was a racist,'' City Market Director Marcie Hill said in an affidavit. Tompkins maintains that the conversation had nothing to do with traffic. Rather, he says, Tulloch asked him to send the black crowd Malone's had begun attracting to Frozen Paradise, another club whose clientele is also mostly black. In the meantime, Brown has requested that the landlords draft a nondiscrimination policy, a document the two are still in negotiations over. ``We're working toward an open and inviting policy that will be consistently administered to all,'' Brown said. Until that agreement is finalized, the city will maintain control over courtyard sound permits.