Charges, suits fly

Graphic artists Marvin and Sharmon Woods learned that as they turned the 200-square-foot vocational school they started in 1983 into a 30,000-square-foot campus called The Art Center Design College.

Located for years on the west side of North Country Club Road, just north of East Grant Road, the college spread east across Country Club in recent years, occupying part of a retail strip the Woodses had bought earlier.

That growth brought the college — now with 330 students enrolled in five degree-granting programs — into conflict with small businesses that were already tenants at the strip. For the last two years, the Woodses and some tenants have slung allegations and lawsuits at each other.

"They (the Woodses) said, 'You're not allowed to have signs anymore.' ... We used to have designated parking. They took that away from us," said Bob Dubois, owner of Uniforms Plus Inc. "It just made it impossible for us."

By 1998, when the Woodses bought the strip at 2538 N. Country Club Road, the college had added a general-education curriculum and had increased admission requirements to attract students more interested in a four-year degree than a vocational program. The property was a personal investment and not part of any urgent expansion plans, Sharmon Woods said.

The school already occupied several buildings on the west side of Country Club and not all of the classrooms were fully utilized, Woods said.

"We knew the majority of the building was leased with long-term leases and therefore it would be a good investment," she said in an e-mail. "When we grew and needed more space, the leases would be beginning to expire."

In 2002, the Woodses renovated the center — at the time the corporate home for at least two businesses, Uniforms Plus Inc. and The Carpet Store, as well as the warehouse for La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries' two Tucson locations.

The changes did not suit everyone, and tensions over parking space, sign rules and use of the common areas ensued.

Larry Hochwert, president of The Carpet Store, was nearing the end of his lease and relocated soon after. Now on the corner of East Grant Road and North Tucson Boulevard, less than a mile from his former location, he contends the Woodses made doing business difficult.

"We had a retail operation there," Hochwert said. "They had their students all over the place, looking like loafers. Their cars were always packed in the parking lot."

Dubois, of Uniforms Plus, later expressed his frustration with the parking lot situation.

"For a retail strip mall, that's the kiss of death," said Dubois, who's been in business at 2945 E. Grant Road since May 2004.

His main complaint was the removal and subsequent prohibition of signs on the building's facade.

Though Dubois admitted he was offered a choice between having a sign on the facade or a monument sign — similar to a billboard toward the north end of the property — he wanted both but was denied.

Not having signs visible from the road not only confused customers who couldn't find him, Dubois said, but led others to presume the lack of signs meant he had closed.

But the Woodses had their own concerns.

They took issue with the constant and unscheduled deliveries to and from La-Z-Boy's warehouse by large trucks, which posed a safety hazard to students, Sharmon Woods said.

Because of the building's layout, designed in the mid-1950s, the docking bays for the trucks were positioned in the front by the parking lot, she said.

In October 2003, the Woodses filed a complaint against Dubois and Graham Co. Inc., the corporation that owns La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries locally, charging they'd violated their leases. Both countersued.

Graham's counterclaim was eventually dismissed, but a judgment was issued covering the company's attorneys' fees. Dubois' May 2005 jury trial ended with a $675,000 judgment in his favor. The Woodses are appealing both decisions.

Though disappointed by the litigation, having been a business owner for more than 30 years Sharmon Woods said it was not surprising.

"We did plan for our growth. We do not believe that those are factors that have created the problems," she said.

But she acknowledged that property management, unlike college planning, was not their forte.