Lawsuit erupts over former downtown Mt. Prospect restaurant

Tod Curtis, the former owner of Ye Olde Town Inn in Mount Prospect, is suing his tenant Vince Scalabrino, the businessman who took over the lease of the longtime downtown restaurant and turned it into the gastrocade Tokens & Tankards, which recently closed.

Scalabrino, meanwhile, said Curtis has changed the locks on the doors and is holding the Tokens & Tankards assets hostage. He called Curtis' action "constructive eviction" under the law.

A date has yet to be set for a hearing. An attorney for Curtis, James Voigt, said there are no hard feelings against Scalabrino but some issues need to be resolved.

Scalabrino said that after he closed Tokens & Tankards, he was looking at reconfiguring his business model and seeing if the operation could be salvaged. He said he talked with potential investors.

"There was some hope that we might reboot," he said.

At the beginning of the second week of September, shortly after the closing was announced on social media, Scalabrino said he received a note from Curtis saying the locks had been changed "for our protection."

"Mind you, we had paid rent through the end of September," Scalabrino said, adding that he was also current on utility bills. He said he intended to use the rest of September to tie up loose ends, clean up the kitchen and work with Curtis or a real estate broker to find a tenant for the space, in the event he was unable to restructure the business.

He said he asked Curtis to let him back inside, but the request "fell on deaf ears."

"I started to feel like our assets were being held hostage," he said.

Those assets, he said, include video games and pinball games, furniture and property owned by other parties, such as games loaned to Tokens & Tankards from the personal collection of Brian Colin, creator of the games Xenophobe and Rampage.

Scalabrino said a local attorney has been working on his behalf but the issue remains unresolved.

Voigt, meanwhile, did not address the allegation Scalabrino was being denied access to his rental property.

Scalabrino "started a restaurant and did the best he could and he closed it," Voigt said. "We don't have any ill will. "There is a problem and it needs a solution, and we weren't getting where we needed to go on that and we unfortunately had to file litigation. The court system, I think, (is) the right place for this to be right now."

Curtis is no stranger to litigation. He received $6.5 million in 2014 from Mount Prospect to settle a 2008 federal racketeering lawsuit in which Curtis charged that village officials and a local development company conspired to seize his land and redevelop the area without him.