Ice Cream Sammies, the two-and-a-half-year-old dessert shop in downtown Chandler, announced it will close this Sunday, Oct. 21, due to a lease dispute with its landlord.
Jamie Votaw and Ariana Cooper, who met when their children played soccer together, launched the business in March 2016 after two years of preparations and an eight-month buildout of the space.
The store, which specializes in ice cream sandwiches made from premium cookies and ice cream made in-house, was an immediate success as customers often lined up out the door.
As the time to renew their lease neared, however, things went awry, as explained in a tearful YouTube video posted by the store.
‘‘Our landlord, even though our lease has an option to renew, has decided she no longer wanted to renew our current lease and instead thrust upon us a new lease,’’ says Votaw’s husband, Joel, who helps out at the store along with six of the founders’ children.
‘‘This lease, posted online at icecreamsammies.com, is so poorly written and unfair that we had eight pages worth of pages or suggestions we were hoping to negotiate. This is not a lease any normal person would sign or agree to.’’
But instead of negotiating, the landlord ordered business out of the building by Oct. 31.
‘‘Is it legal? Possibly, although we do have our doubts,’’ Joel Votaw (pictured above with his wife and Cooper) says. ‘‘We agree the costs proposed in the lease were fair, but there were so many other items that were unacceptable – too many even to list.’’
The Votaws and Cooper currently are looking for a new location to reopen Ice Cream Sammies.
“Eight months to build our dream,’’ Cooper says. ‘‘Landlord says six weeks to get out.’’
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