A 27-year-old Fort Lauderdale entrepreneur says her first brick-and-mortar dream got steamrolled when her landlord kicked off heavy demolition work around her brand-new café at Cypress Creek Station.
Taylor Schear’s company, Sheer Hospitality, has sued Kimco Realty, alleging the landlord’s construction work effectively destroyed Drip Coffee just as it opened. The suit claims the café was left unable to operate even as Schear continued to pay rent on the space.
The complaint, filed in Broward County Circuit Court, seeks roughly $9 million in damages. It alleges Kimco started demolition at the plaza only days after Drip opened, leaving Schear on the hook for $6,500 a month for a storefront she says she could not use. According to the filing, Sheer Hospitality spent more than $450,000 on the café’s buildout, only to see construction crews expand work into the unit, change the locks and cause debris to fall into customers’ food. The lawsuit names Kimco Realty and Cypress Creek Associates Limited Partnership as defendants and lays out claims including lost profits, property damage and reputational harm, according to The Real Deal.
Property and timeline
Cypress Creek Station, a Kimco-owned open-air center, is marketed at 6415 N Andrews Ave in Fort Lauderdale and lists anchors that include LA Fitness and a large Target. Kimco’s own leasing brochure and commercial listings show several available 1,600-square-foot storefronts there, matching the size Sheer Hospitality says it leased and built out. The complaint alleges construction crews began demolition two days after Drip opened in September and that nearby spaces were razed to make way for a Target, according to materials from Kimco Realty and a listing on CommercialSearch.
What the suit alleges
“If you see this construction, it’s not construction. It’s demolition,” Sheer’s attorney Jordan Shaw said in an interview, arguing the extensive work made the location unusable as a new café. Shaw told reporters that landlord notices downplayed the project’s scope and that while many tenants received accommodations during the work, Sheer Hospitality was not offered alternatives, a central allegation in the complaint. The quote and related reporting were published by The Real Deal.
Damages and what comes next
The lawsuit breaks down the roughly $9 million demand to include the buildout cost, about $100,000 in alleged property and equipment losses, and paid rent and CAM charges, including around $25,000 that Schear says she paid after vacating the space. It also claims lost profits projected at about $1.2 million a year.
According to the filing, Schear closed Drip in December and never reopened, asserting that demolition work fenced off the café’s entrance and turned the unit into what amounted to a construction site. The case is set to move forward in Broward County. Kimco has stated it “disagrees with the characterization of events and allegations.”
Why it matters
Schear had planned to build Drip into a small local chain across Broward County and into Miami before the disruption, the complaint says. Now the legal fight could help define how far a landlord can go with redevelopment plans when a small operator has poured significant money into a space.
With owners across South Florida repositioning older centers to lure and expand national tenants, disputes like this one may become a recurring test of how redevelopment pressures collide with protections for independent businesses trying to get a foothold.
