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Longtime Harvard Square bar Whitneys will close at the end of this year after being served an eviction notice for failing to pay rent.
Whitneys — which is located at 37 John F. Kennedy St. and opened in 1953 — was purchased by Mayhaw LLC more than a decade ago. Mayhaw is owned by Gerald L. Chan, a billionaire investor who owns more than $100 million worth of Harvard Square real estate. Chan’s family pledged a $350 million donation to rename the School of Public Health in 2014.
In October, Whitneys and Mayhaw agreed in court that Whitneys would cease business operations by Jan. 1, 2025, and vacate the property by Jan. 15. In exchange, Mayhaw would forgive $44,800 in missed rent payments.
The agreement also banned Whitneys from allowing live bands, music, or outdoor speakers on the property.
Rather than attributing the eviction to the missing payments, a statement released by a public relations firm on behalf of Whitneys claimed that the eviction was the result of daytime noise complaints.
“Whitneys has always played music in accordance with our entertainment license, and we have never had to meet with the City of Cambridge and its license commission for any noise complaint,” Whitneys owner Dan McGuire wrote in the press release.
“We’re beginning to think ‘noise’ truly cannot be the reason for wanting us to leave, and leave in such a hurry,” he added.
Dan White, an affiliate of Chan’s who manages the JFK Street property, said that McGuire’s missed rent prompted the eviction. Whitneys stopped paying rent in October 2023, prompting them to begin pursuing eviction proceedings earlier this year.
“It's hard to keep a tenant if they don’t pay any rent,” White said.
Noise, White said, “was not the guiding light.”
“The guiding light for any landlord, I suppose, is you want your tenants to do well and you want them to pay rent,” he added. “Dan’s a hard-working guy, and he’s doing what he can, but we the landlord can only do so much.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Whitneys’ lease expired. Instead of renewing it, Mayhaw offered Whitneys a month-to-month agreement that would afford McGuire more financial flexibility.
McGuire said Mayhaw was “very good” about restructuring their financial agreement during the pandemic. He claimed that he stopped paying rent in April due to an unfulfilled “promise” by Mayhaw to upgrade the building’s power supply, which he alleges was done for Mayhaw’s other tenants.
“It’s been talked about and promised, in order for me to grow my business here, that the power is gonna be upgraded,” McGuire said. “I currently only have 200 amps in my bar, which is not a lot of power.”
“In fact, I plug in a toaster, it shorts out,” he said.
In response, White said there “was never a promise.”
“I think he had an expectation that would be done,” White said. “We do the best we can, but it doesn’t mean he gets to withhold rent.”
McGuire claimed that after the power upgrades were sorted out, he was forced to leave the property in order for his back pay to be forgiven.
In addition, McGuire also said Morningside moved more of its offices into the upper floors of the property, which he claims led to the eviction.
“They don’t like my look or my sound. He doesn’t want that as his corporate view,” McGuire said.
White said the decision had nothing to do with McGuire’s character.
“We helped them through Covid, gave them rent forgiveness, rent decreases, put them on a percentage rent,” White said.
“If he didn’t do well, there was just a bare minimum rent,” White said. “And at some point, even those minimum rent payments stopped.”
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.
