Lulu's Burger Shack finding new quarters

When Susan “Lulu” Briggs and her daughter, Amber Nara shook hands on a five year with option to buy lease with the owner of what had been Mace’s Drive-In, they thought their troubles were over.

They were wrong.

“We initially found this on Facebook,” Nara said. “The ad stated that it was known throughout the Pacific Northwest, that it had been in his family a long time and that it was up and running. The history behind it was really awesome.

“It was what we were looking for,” Nara continued. “We had a meeting at my mom’s house with Shawn and Sheila Mace and with several witnesses, we came to an agreement on a five year lease with an option to buy the building, while continuing to lease the land, as it had been in his family for a long time.”

They made plans to remodel.

“The equipment was all broken in here except one side of the ice cream machine. We used that and bought our own equipment. We put in a new floor, and fixed the siding that had been down for years. We spent $7,000, but that was okay because every improvement we did was only better going forward because we had the option to buy in five years or continue to lease.”

According to Nara, a lease never materialized. There was always an excuse.

Lulu's was quickly approaching their first anniversary in Cathlamet, and they were concerned about several projects that needed to be done. A woman had slipped on the crumbling stairs in the front and was injured.

“We had a couple meetings about that,” Nara said. “And when we had a meeting about the lease, Mace again showed up empty handed. He told us there were going to be a lot of new stipulations. We were like, wow—we’ve been broken into a couple times. We’ve been vandalized. It’s all a loss to us. Without a lease we cannot insure our business, our building.”

Knowing that Mace was busy, Nara and Briggs approached an attorney and asked him to write up a generic commercial lease, which would allow them to do the maintenance or hire someone, out of their own pocket.

“We would be able to fix the steps, the hot water tank that has been leaking for years,” Nara said. “We never heard anything back on it.”

When Mace told them he was putting in new lights and that it would raise their bill, Briggs went to the PUD and told them they didn’t want to invest any more until they figured out where they stood.

Then, without a word, work began in the parking lot for a new food cart offering fish and chips, a venture that the Ostling family was very excited about.

“Nobody had the decency to say, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’” Nara said. “Tracy (Ostling Tomlinson) came to the window and said ‘I wanted to tell you about this but Shawn said I wasn’t allowed.’

“That’s absolutely unacceptable,” Nara said. “Who built the tension? We aren’t allowed to park on that side of the parking lot anymore. Half the time we don’t know where our garbage cans are because they keep getting moved around.

“We wondered what was going on. We’d invested so much.”

Suddenly they learned that Mace had retained an attorney. That knowledge was quickly followed by an eviction notice on April 27. They would have to be out by May 31.

“We were blindsided,” Nara said. “The rumor mill is that we refused the lease. We were never presented a lease. That’s all we wanted. We have to have a lease for safety or accidents, for improvements, in order to be a functioning business. This is a small town. Your word means a lot. A handshake goes far. We’re from a small town. When you shake someone's hand and say this is how it is going to be, we count on it. We would have never dumped money into a building if we thought any differently. We lost and we learned. Going forward we’ll never make that mistake again.”

Part of Nara and Briggs’ dreams were to open in more than one location. Here and somewhere else. They’ve gotten involved here, donating for the school yearbook and helping cheerleaders go to camp. They’ve donated to the food banks.

“If we can touch one community, surely we can tough another,” Nara said, “but right now we sit with the uncertainty of where to go. The only thing we know in our hearts is that we will land in Cathlamet. We have fallen in love with this community. We have an amazing crew of customers.”

As for the Ostlings, they found themselves in the crosshairs, rumors gathering speed and collecting detritus along the way.

They hadn’t known what was brewing; they too had only heard rumors.

Not long after they opened for business, a man stopped by to share some of his misinformed vitriol and left Sherry Ostling frightened and shaken.

“I always thought these two businesses would work perfectly together,” Sherry Ostling said.

“I don’t want hard feelings. I’ve lived in this town all my life. I hate being in the middle of this.”

As for the rumor that the Ostlings wanted to move into the building after Lulu’s leaves, Terry Ostling had a quick answer in the form of a question.

“Why would we want a building when we’ve put so much money into this truck?”

Things have settled down, conversations have cleared the misunderstandings and the feeling of friendship between the Ostling and Briggs families and their businesses has returned.

All of Lulu’s proceeds for the month of May will go towards their new place. If all goes according to plan, it will be here, in the town they have come to love.

The Eagle contacted the Maces for this story; they declined to comment.