Landlord dispute baffles tenants

Unsure who to pay the rent to, some tenants in Gulfport's arts district put the cash in an escrow account.

By KIBRET MARKOS

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 19, 2000

GULFPORT -- A pending property foreclosure in the city's art district has wrecked a decades-long friendship and left tenants wondering what name to write on their next rent check.

To keep his property at 2908-14 Beach Blvd., Anatoly Vikrov has until Aug. 14 to pay Joseph Okrajek more than $150,000.

The nine tenants, seven of them business owners, are feeling the fallout. Their roofs leak. They have lost power because their landlord didn't pay the utility bill. Uncertain who their landlord is anymore, the tenants are putting their rent payments in escrow until the case is resolved. For that, they are being threatened with eviction.

Vikrov and Okrajek, who met in 1982 and have socialized at each other's homes, conceived this deal three years ago: Vikrov bought two Beach Boulevard lots from Okrajek for $105,000 and, a month later, borrowed another $60,000. Okrajek held the mortgage. Vikrov, whose given name is Vikhlyantsev, was paying his debt -- almost $1,800 a month -- through rents collected.

In March of this year, Okrajek said, Vikrov stopped paying.

"Tony has been receiving rent from the tenants, but he hasn't given me any receipts since then," said Okrajek, 63, who had moved here from Czechoslovakia in 1974.

Okrajek says a judgment will get Vikrov "out of the picture." But Vikrov, 48, who moved here from Russia in 1975, said: "I have until Aug. 14 to make my payments. I will not let go of this property. I will fight for it."

In the meantime, Okrajek notified tenants in a June 30 letter that he is the landlord and that he intends to collect rents due. "If the tenants don't pay me, I will have them evicted."

Michele Mangelsdorf, who runs the Port Pourris antiques store in one of the buildings, is not as excited about her shop today as when she opened it in February.

"There is always a leak," she said, pointing at a 2-inch-wide puncture at a corner of her roof. "I called my landlord (Vikrov) 10 times and he has sent people to patch it up, but there would soon be another leakage. The roof is old and basically needs to be replaced."

After a 1928 wooden box and some other items were soaked, Mangelsdorf joined the other tenants who position buckets in their shops to collect water and prevent more damage. She is worried about losing customers: "I don't want people to come in here and think that my roof is coming down."

Bonnie Finley-Hall, who is looking for another location for her gallery, said: "We are playing a waiting game."

But the waiting game is taxing, said Jane Harris of the JHM Studio. "It's hard to do business like this. We can't plan for the future."

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