Help save Aesthetic Ambition!

We are a small, locally owned piercing and fine jewelry studio looking to move to beautiful downtown Santa Monica.

After finding a location on Main Street, we were excited for the new possibilities ahead of us, including a larger studio to accommodate more clients, multiple rooms to open us up for walk-ins, and more display space for even more gorgeous jewelry. We set up plans and applied for permits in February 2022, and were able - barely - to negotiate for three months' before rent payments would start ($9.8k/mo) given shared communication with City Hall and our contractors about estimated wait time.

We signed the lease in March, paid a 35k deposit, and therefore began paying monthly rent in May until now. With deposit, that's over 100k for an empty building we haven't been able to touch. We -STILL- have not been granted all required permits to begin necessary construction on the building. Two main issues presented themselves:

(i) The location was previously divided into two businesses each with their own electrical meter, but the City of Santa Monica required us to relocate them into one location, and this just got approved TWO weeks ago.

(ii) All previous tenants utilized the shared dumpster location behind the building, but new rules disallow our only routes of access to the city trash, so they are forcing us to put trash bins INSIDE our building (goodbye to one entire room!).

In addition to this, we have had to extend our current lease several times, each time incurring a rent hike, now at 8.5k/mo for 450 sq.feet. This double rent, together with considerable construction and permit costs, has made us unable to pay our employees let alone hire a lawyer. And yet now we must to avoid bankruptcy.

We are hoping to go into mitigation with the landlords to forgive future rent payments until we are actually open, and this requires legal representation at $450/hour. We have hired Avraham Sinai of Sinai Law here in Santa Monica. He believes we have a strong case given landlord responsibility for constructive knowledge of their property.

Please help us fight back and save our shop!