Little Red Hen eviction fight in Seattle pushed to September trial

A bitter eviction fight between the iconic Seattle staple, Little Red Hen, and its landlord will wage on after the eviction trial was pushed to late September.

The trial was originally scheduled to happen April 24. According to King County Superior Court Judge Kent Liu, more time is needed to gather evidence for a “fair and efficient resolution.”

According to RLD Group, the landlord of the establishment since 2022, the bar did not have a valid lease even before they took over the building. The landlord claimed the bar was allowed to stay on a month-to-month basis in good faith, but The Little Red Hen’s manager disputed that claim, arguing that the new property owners tried to raise the rent.

Dominic Shim, the owner of Little Red Hen, claimed his bar has a lease through 2030, established with the prior building owner.

Little Red Hen is a country-themed bar that has been in operation since 1933 and has been nestled within Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood since 1968.

Dumpsters proved to be breaking point for Little Red Hen, ownership group

Tensions between the property owners and the bar boiled over last year due to a matter involving the bar’s dumpster. The neighboring Wooden City Tavern has been paying the majority of The Little Red Hen’s trash fees for the past five years in exchange for using the dumpster, The Seattle Times reported. But RDL Group terminated this deal after taking over the property. The owner of The Little Red Hen estimated this change would cost the business $40,000 annually.

RDL Group officially filed the eviction lawsuit on Nov. 5 after Shim refused to engage in lease negotiations. Since the eviction lawsuit, attorneys for RLD Group claimed Shim has displayed “increasingly odd and threatening behavior.”

“You want to (expletive) with me, I have nothing to lose. I asked you nicely to leave me alone,” Shim allegedly wrote the RDL Group at 1:04 a.m. June 12, according to The Seattle Times. “You step on my toe, I will (expletive) with your whole family, including your daughter.”

Shim apologized for the email, stating “the tone of that communication was wrong.”

Spike mourns the end of The Little Red Hen

“I think it’s more than just a business, closing The Little Red Hen in the Green Lake area,” KIRO host Spike O’Neill said. “The value it brought to, not just from the business perspective, but from a cultural perspective and a quality-of-life perspective to our neighborhood. Hey, pub is short for public house after all.”

“Should we mourn, and is it proper to mourn as a lot of these smaller establishments are going away here in the area and just being replaced by the lowest common denominator? These big national chains that can afford to have a location that doesn’t operate necessarily as well because the other stores will pick up the slack for them,” KIRO fill-in host Greg Tomlin said. “Whereas, if you’re a mom-and-pop shop, so to speak, you have to make it work. You’ve got to meet the bottom line month over month, or you could be out of business.

“It’s sad to see, because it does sort of fundamentally change certain areas, and it’s a bummer,” Tomlin added. “But again, I don’t know what the solution to a story like this is. It’s sad.”

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