As the era of Scales restaurant closes, Monterey seeks new tenant for prominent wharf location.

After seven years, Scales Seafood & Steaks closed the doors of its prominently-placed restaurant on Old Fisherman's Wharf for good on July 25 after the the restaurant's landlord, the city of Monterey, and tenant could not come to an agreement. The city is now seeking a new tenant for the valuable piece of real estate. 

Scales, owned by members of the Shake family, a powerhouse in the local restaurant scene, had been operating since 2014, taking over the place after Gilbert's reign ended. The Shakes subleased the space from Mary Alice Cerrito Fettis, whose 39-year lease on the property expires on Saturday, July 31. 

With Fettis's lease coming to a close, Monterey City Manager Hans Uslar says the city approached Chris and J.R. Shake directly about becoming the new master lease holders. After some back and forth, the Shake family withdrew from negotiations, calling the city's proposed terms economically infeasible. 

"We would have gone bankrupt," says attorney Tony Lombardo, who represented the Shakes in negotiations. "Even if labor and material costs were stable, the lease terms were untenable. The Shakes were concerned that, if they were in position where something like the pandemic happened again, they'd owe a gigantic minimum rent payment that they couldn't afford."  

Lombardo says the building that houses Scales will be challenging for any tenant due to its size and a second floor area that the Shakes considered to be unusable as a means to grow revenue. 

"We [unsuccessfully] offered to give the upstairs back to the city," Lombardo says, "paying a huge minimum rent on basically storage space is not feasible." 

Uslar says the city is "disappointed" the Shakes will no longer occupy the space. He says the city is searching for a new tenant and, although he expects it to be a restaurant, he is open to new concepts for the location.