Owners of embattled 5-Day Furniture Warehouse
– Gilroy’s largest and newest furniture store – announced they
will file a lawsuit Tuesday against the city, claiming officials
wrongly restricted the store’s retail sales privileges.
GILROY – Owners of embattled 5-Day Furniture Warehouse – Gilroy’s largest and newest furniture store – announced they will file a lawsuit Tuesday against the city, claiming officials wrongly restricted the store’s retail sales privileges.
Details of the suit were not finalized by lawyers before press time Friday, but the combination wholesale-retail store will ask a judge for broader retail sales rights.
The store’s lawyers also are considering seeking damages for what co-owner Hai Tran called slanderous comments made by Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer.
“The mayor called me an idiot. He used the term idiotic. He called me a liar,” Tran said. “We don’t need money from them. If we (seek damages for slander), that’s up to my lawyer. He’s dissecting the case right now.”
Tran, who is Vietnamese, said Friday that Vietnamese friends and family members have anted up $50,000 to bring the case against the city to court. Tran said some of the support is coming from Asian furniture merchants in the Bay Area and Sacramento.
According to Tran, these proprietors were hassled by the city when they tried to operate businesses in Gilroy about 10 years ago. Tran did not provide detailed description of those issues, but said the city was “enforcing things unnecessarily.”
“This fight is not alone with me, it is with a lot of Vietnamese furniture stores. Ten years ago Best Buy Furniture and Furniture City had to close up because of problems with the city,” Tran said.
5-Day Furniture’s decision to sue the city comes days after City Council’s 5-2 vote determining the store violated its business license and zoning guidelines by regularly selling retail furniture out of their 500 E. Luchessa Ave. building. The southeast area of Gilroy is zoned for wholesale and industrial purposes.
The decision meant that 5-Day Furniture can hold no more than 12 days of sales each year, a ruling lawyers will try to have stayed by a judge as litigation is ongoing.
The store was running large scale blowout sales, sometimes daily.
Three of the store’s retail days will be eaten up this Memorial Day weekend when the 162,000-square-foot store holds a large retail sale.
Tran contends the store never hid its intention to hold retail sales. According to business license documents from the city, 5-Day Furniture had the right to sell furniture on an “ancillary” basis. Tran said the store was told to keep 25 percent or less of the facility open for retail, but city officials claim “ancillary” meant much less than that.
The city received anonymous complaints of zoning violations after 5-Day Furniture began its retail sales months ago. Tran has claimed those complaints were driven by competitor Rosso’s Furniture, which is owned by Jaime Rosso, a Gilroy school board trustee and longtime businessman in the community.
At a recent City Council meeting, Springer called allegations about Rosso’s influence “bull-dickey.” At that same Council session, Springer called Tran’s allegations of racism “idiotic.”
