Contrary to IAS claims, Online Tech has been involved in the community for years giving back to nonprofits in a number of ways. We recently reconfirmed our commitment to provide Nonprofit Enterprise at Work with thousands of dollars a month in free service.

Check out how NEW is helping Nonprofits deploy thier IT infrastructure with help from Online Tech at link to Online Tech

We’re at 6 weeks now and counting.

The other BIG reason we withheld rent because we were significantly overcharged for basement space the landlord said he’d lease to us & make ready but then never did anything, but CONTINUED to overcharge us for it for 3 years @ around $50k total. When we approached him about this he admitted “yeah, we’re probably being overcharged for the basement” (since he wasn’t making the other 50% space available) and would “provide us a credit” but when we asked for it we were denied anything and he CONTINUED to charge us.

Starting Nov 07 & on it was especially bad inside with no quarterly leak repairs being done at all. The real estate market was tough so it was about how much he could get away with and nothing else. If we were in any other office situation and we would have just left outright years ago but we had to fight as we were tied to and had significant investment in the facility for our datacenter (over $100k of generator, electrical, security, etc) that we put in new in 05.

This past year it became evident the landlord was going to continue to operate our area with increasingly smaller amounts of resources & maintenance. When we were trying to find a way to consolidate space or relocate we moved some office supplies and discovered significant black stains behind the boxes on the wall. We immediately contacted a local testing firm to see what it was & the data & resulting affidavit are posted & available at http://ias.net/brewery/ .

We were “late” with rent because we were WITHHOLDING it as we could think of no other way to get our space maintained. We had “simple” needs like not being significantly overcharged for our lease & having our regular office space maintained. The legal process for landlord-tenant claims heavily favors the incumbent landlord. The burden of proof, massive expense of litigation AND escrow (having to pay rent for a space not at all worthy of occupancy) all the while having to ALSO continue to put up with unmaintained space all falls on the tenant.

Coincidence or not, some people got very sick in this area and we could never figure out what was going on or made any connection to anything.

In Oct 07 we sent one of our frequent “here’s where all the leaks are this month” e-mails and one of our staff noticed that not only was the paint continuing to fall off in this one increasingly worsening area but there appeared to be some stains where the paint was cracking. In a “shock tactic” to get the landlord to pay attention to our pleas to get this chronic leak fixed we called it “mold” but really had no idea (we didn’t discover the big black area behind the boxes until late Nov 08). Guess what the response was? NOTHING! He didn’t care that we said mold but conveniently recalled that in the court we previously “discovered mold” and did nothing. For over a year HE KNEW and did NOTHING!

Its the OWNERS responsibility to maintain their building & make it a safe/habitable environment for tenants.

I’d like to go on record that we believe the counsel for the landlord is an excellent and very clever lawyer.

Oh and don’t you believe that OTC are saints for offering to assist now as if they were they would have been aggressively supporting the non-profit community with in-kind services & development like we have for OVER 10 YEARS. They just want the business.

With regards to previous litigation battles don’t think we’ve forgotten when our former investor breached his fiduciary duties & BoAA called our loan a few days before 9/11 and THEN offered to arrange that OTC (a client of BoAA) could be provided an expanded credit line to purchase our hosting services division at “pennies on the dollar”. Saints indeed.

Report

According to the release, “The admittedly sudden move by IAS was precipitated by years of neglect in the building in which IAS leased space, which led to the growth of black mold. While making arrangements for an orderly migration to a new facility, it was called to our attention that the problem was much more severe than originally thought, and that the health of our staff could be at risk. We therefore made the determination to vacate immediately and relocate to our new facility, a feat that was accomplished in, literally, 24 hours. The process required us to abandon much of our office furniture and fixtures that, having been exposed to the mold, could not be remediated to the degree to make them useable. In the process of the sudden move, we did experience disruption to the services we provide to our valued clients. For that we sincerely apologize. “