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Napi’s Restaurant

    CHANGING TIDES

    After Almost 50 Years, Napi’s Restaurant Closes

    Infused with art and local history, the business was neither transferred nor sold

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Just shy of its 50th anniversary serving sustenance and spectacle, the eclectic Napi’s, often referred to lovingly as “Provincetown’s most unusual restaurant,” closed its doors last month. Best known for its decor and its late proprietor, Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, the restaurant was for decades a locus of year-round community and a showcase of the town’s artistic heritage.

    Diners enjoy a meal in the upstairs dining room at Napi’s Restaurant. (Photos courtesy David W. Dunlap/Provincetown Encyclopedia)

    Napi died on Christmas Day 2019, and the restaurant’s current owner, Dan Sabuda, did not respond to inquiries about the closure from the Independent. But current and past employees of the restaurant confirmed that it has closed for good.

    Lisa Martin, who works for the Van Dereck Trust, which controls the many residential properties that Napi also owned, told the Independent in a brief phone call that the restaurant closed because of town enforcement actions at those properties. She would not comment on whether the restaurant has been sold or if there are plans to sell it.

    The property is not publicly listed for sale, and there are no public records indicating a transfer of the property or the licenses for the restaurant business.

    Martin also blamed the restaurant’s closure on the Provincetown Independent’s reporting on the disposition of Van Dereck’s estate, which is controlled by Bernard McEneaney, a sole trustee who is also the sole conservator for Napi’s wife, Helen Haunstrup, who has dementia.

    “We were dragged through the mud, and it ruined the reputation of the restaurant,” Martin said.

    Napi and Helen purchased the property at 7 Freeman St. in 1973, when it consisted of a house and a series of moldering garages. At first, the garages served as a flea market for the couple’s burgeoning antique collection. They then had the idea to turn the garages into a Middle Eastern restaurant, a nod to Napi’s trips to Egypt and Palestine as a kid. Two years later, on June 27, 1975, Napi’s Restaurant opened its doors.

    According to David W. Dunlap’s architectural compendium Building Provincetown, there was no money to be had from the bank, so Napi relied on his friends for help. A bevy of carpenters, artisans, and artists produced a decor that Dunlap describes as “imaginative, free-flowing, aesthetic, resourceful, somewhat ornery, more than a little bit eccentric and deeply rooted in the town.”

    Jackson Lambert embellished a cold air duct hanging from the ceiling of the restaurant with a whimsical arctic tableau and also designed the Eye of Horus emblem that became the restaurant’s logo. Frank Milby built the topographic codfish that hangs over the entrance to the restaurant. And perhaps most notably, the sculptor and mason Conrad Malicoat built one of his earliest “brick breakthrough” designs around the entrance to the restroom.

    Dunlap’s inventory of Malicoat’s iconic brick installations lists 14 private homes, Napi’s Restaurant, and the fireplace at the Red Inn. Malicoat’s daughter Galen Malicoat told the Independent she believes the wall at Napi’s was one of Conrad’s first pieces.

    “Napi and Helen were so supportive of the arts in so many ways,” Malicoat said. “It gave Conrad a chance to experiment with his art.”

    Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup lent his name, his stories, and his collector’s eye to Napi’s Restaurant.

    As Napi’s Restaurant rose to prominence, Napi and Helen purchased more than a dozen residential properties to house their employees and amassed a sizable collection of locally made art. “Between the art collection and the real estate, Napi owned half of Provincetown,” said artist Sophia Reznick, an alumna of the Cape Cod School of Art who frequented the restaurant.

    Artist Arthur Egeli was a 19-year-old student at Cape Cod School of Art when he first visited the restaurant for an art show upstairs. “I soon realized that Napi was one of the ambassadors of Provincetown art,” Egeli said. “The fact that he was collecting it that early, buying it all over the country and bringing it back to Provincetown, it was almost like he was ahead of the momentum to rediscover our heritage.”

    Napi’s became as much museum as restaurant, which meant that the servers were also docents. “We all learned the lore behind the art,” said David Gips, who was a host at Napi’s for almost 30 seasons. “If somebody asked, ‘Who painted that?,’ we had to know. It made it into not just a restaurant but a story people would tell.”

    Different patrons were drawn to different artifacts, Gips said. One night, a man came in and spent the whole evening staring at a carousel horse perched along the wall. “Finally, I went over to him and said, ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ — and he goes, ‘Let me tell you! I might be the only one left in the world, but my job is to repair carousel horses.’ ”

    The restaurant later received a letter from that man detailing the make of the horse and its origin, Gips said.

    Gips came to Napi’s in 1996 because he heard waiting tables was good money. He met Van Dereck for the first time during his job interview.

    “He proceeded to interrogate me on anything and everything but nothing that had anything to do with the restaurant or my experience,” Gips said. “That was good, because I had no experience.” Napi gave him the job because they both had sisters in the Air Force, Gips said.

    Gips moved into the residential complex at 25 Bradford St., nicknamed “Napiville,” in the early 2000s. The first unit he moved into had been occupied by dory fisherman Eddie Ritter, and “you could scratch the nicotine off the windowsills,” he said. Gips moved into another unit soon after, which also had some quirks, but it was all right because Van Dereck said he didn’t have to pay rent.

    “He said, ‘I have a proposal for you,’ which he had a lot of over the years,” Gips said.

    Sculptor Conrad Malicoat’s early “brick breakthrough” project frames the door to the restrooms.

    “I would like you to get on your bicycle and go around town and deliver Napi’s menus and chitchat with people,” Gips recalled Van Dereck saying. “In exchange, you don’t have to pay rent.”

    Van Dereck was loyal to his workers, and many, like Gips, stayed on for decades. “We were like a small, dysfunctional family,” Gips said. “I made most of my really good friends in Provincetown from that place.”

    When Napi died in 2019, he left his fortune, estimated at $17 million, to Helen — but she had already been diagnosed with dementia. She was declared unfit to manage the estate by a judge in Barnstable Probate Court in 2020, and McEneaney won legal guardianship over Haunstrup in 2021.

    Ownership of the restaurant passed to Sabuda, who fired many of Napi’s long-term employees in spring and summer of 2021, with at least three families then being told to vacate the housing Napi had owned.

    The town received reports of housing code violations at some of the properties, and after years of wrangling with town officials, McEneaney asked the remaining tenants at Napiville to leave in January so he could sell it. In August, an LLC incorporated in Delaware bought the property at 25-27 Bradford St., and while many tenants have remained, others, including Gips, moved out after receiving the January eviction notice.

    David Gips, who hosted at Napi’s Restaurant for decades, said customers often asked where the stained-glass windows came from. Employees of the restaurant told the stories behind the art, he said.

    In the eviction notice, McEneaney wrote that the town’s enforcement actions had forced him to sell; Martin cited similar reasons for the closure of the restaurant.

    It is unclear what will happen to what is left of the restaurant. Some art pieces have already gone to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, which has more than 300 works from Van Dereck’s collection on extended loan, said museum trustee Jim Bakker.

    The rest of the restaurant’s artwork will go to auction, Bakker said; 39 pieces were auctioned on Oct. 19. Earnings will “go to Helen for her care,” Bakker said.

    Because little is known about the future of the building, the fate of its permanent features are also unknown. “We would be very sad to see the wall come down,” Galen Malicoat said, referring to Conrad’s brick sculpture. “It is part of the artistic legacy of Provincetown that is changing so much.”

    “I remember going there in the middle of a snowstorm to have my bouillabaisse,” Reznick said. “Napi would tell me stories as he drank his gin martini at the end of the bar. It was somewhere you could go to get a piece of Provincetown history.”

    In his account in Building Provincetown, Dunlap called the restaurant “one of those institutions so interwoven with town life that it would be hard to imagine Provincetown without it.”

    Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Oct. 24, incorrectly referred to Galen Malicoat as Conrad Malicoat’s granddaughter. She is his daughter.

    HOUSING

    Napi’s Tenants Are Again Facing Eviction

    A tenant’s lawyer says eviction letter is ‘retaliatory and clearly illegal’

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Two years after the new owners of Napi’s Restaurant evicted at least seven former employees from restaurant-owned housing, current tenants of those units continue to face the threat of eviction.

    According to Provincetown attorney Robert Lowe and documents obtained by the Independent from Lowe and through public records requests, one tenant has endured substandard living conditions since moving into an apartment in 2021. When he complained, he was subjected to harassment and intimidation by the landlord.

    That tenant and at least one other living in restaurant-owned housing have said they are currently facing eviction. The Independent is not publishing the tenants’ names to reduce the chances of discrimination against them by potential future landlords — a common occurrence, say advocates for tenants’ rights.

    Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, the longtime owner of the restaurant, died on Christmas Day 2019. Since then, Napi’s has been run by Berni McEneaney and Dan Sabuda. Neither McEneaney nor Sabuda responded to repeated requests for comment.

    Attorney Lowe’s client moved into a second-floor unit at 7 Standish St. in September 2021 after working as a bartender at Napi’s for a summer, Lowe said. The previous occupant of the unit, Delroy Brennan, worked at Napi’s for 19 years before being evicted along with six other tenants, all of them from Jamaica, who were Napi’s employees. According to several knowledgeable sources, a few of them, including Ellis Wilson, Tony Cleary, Kevin Linsey, and Dwight Sangster, eventually found housing elsewhere on the Outer Cape.

    In the last four months, Lowe’s client experienced two flooded apartments, lived without heat and water for at least two weeks in February, and received threats of physical harm from Lisa Meads, the office assistant at the restaurant. On April 27, he received a notice demanding he vacate his unit by June 1. He is waiting to fight the eviction in court, according to Lowe.

    McEneaney, who lives in Marstons Mills, was Napi’s longtime financial adviser. McEneaney took control of Napi’s estate after winning a lengthy court battle against Judy Saffron, Napi’s half-sister. Napi’s wife, Helen Haunstrup, was the original executor of the will, but in 2018 Helen was diagnosed with dementia, and in 2020 she was declared unfit to manage the estate.

    In December 2021, McEneaney and Sabuda informed employees that they were closing the restaurant for the winter — the first time that had been done since it opened in 1978.

    According to Lowe, Sabuda told Lowe’s client to go on unemployment until the restaurant reopened. The tenant instead found work at another restaurant. In March 2022, the tenant received a text message from McEneaney: “I expect you will be vacated by the end of today, new tenant will be here Monday,” it read. “I will not accept anything otherwise.”

    McEneaney’s message continued: “You will be considered trespassing tomorrow and therefore I will empty the place for you. I will leave your stuff in the space below the front of the building and cover it with a tarp.” McEneaney argued that because the tenant was not an employee of Napi’s he could no longer live on the property, Lowe said.

    For months afterward, McEneaney and Meads repeatedly threatened to evict the tenant, Lowe said. None of those threats amounted to adequate notices to quit under state law, Lowe said.

    “They would leave notes on his door telling him to get out, but they never sent him a formal notice,” Lowe said. “Then for a while, things were quiet.”

    The First Storm

    On Feb. 4 of this year, an Arctic blast brought subzero temperatures to Provincetown, freezing and bursting water pipes across town. The apartment at 7 Standish St. was one of those damaged in the storm. At 2:30 p.m., the tenant heard a loud pop and then the sound of rushing water. Water began to spurt from a burst pipe in the kitchen ceiling.

    The unit at 7 Standish St. after pipes burst in the ceiling on Feb. 4. (Photos courtesy Robert Lowe)

    The tenant called his landlord’s office. According to Housing Court records, Meads told him “they were not responsible” for fixing the pipes because they were evicting him.

    In a telephone interview with a reporter, Meads said the court documents are incorrect. “I didn’t tell him it wasn’t our responsibility,” she said. “I told him we couldn’t get any plumber in town to come fix it.”

    According to an affidavit of support for a temporary restraining order the tenant later filed, the tenant himself found a plumber who agreed to turn off the water. The affidavit stated that it “required turnoff from the water main outside of the building,” because the shutoff valve in the basement “was rusted and frozen.” The tenant said the valve’s handle broke off when he tried to turn it.

    For the next couple of days, the tenant used fans in an effort to dry out the apartment. He received a text from Meads saying, “You will have to find somewhere else to live,” he said.

    The tenant then contacted the Provincetown Board of Health. According to town records, Health Agent Lezli Rowell inspected the building on Feb. 7. In her report, she documented numerous violations of the state sanitary code, including “no heat and damaged plumbing” in the building. Rowell reported a temperature of 60 degrees in the tenant’s unit at 8:30 a.m. The state sanitary code requires rental units to be heated to at least 68 degrees between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.

    Rowell also found that the ceiling above the door was open and “exposed to weather,” her report said. “Property managers report plumbing damages that were in diagnosis and repair prior to the recent frozen/burst pipes causing additional damage,” she wrote.

    An enforcement letter from Rowell ordered Sabuda “to make a good faith effort to correct these violations within 24 hours by reporting to Provincetown Health.” It also ordered Sabuda to relocate the tenant to a different unit.

    McEneaney offered the tenant a new rental at $1,700 a month — almost double the $950 he had been paying.

    On Feb. 21, Lowe filed a temporary restraining order against McEneaney demanding that he relocate the tenant to an apartment at 27 Bradford St. for $950 a month. The town housed the tenant at the Admiral’s Landing hotel for four nights before he was given the keys to 27 Bradford St. on March 1, according to board of health chair Susan Troyan.

    The tenant lived at 7 Standish St. for more than two weeks without heat or water. He used the bathroom at CVS and showered at the Provincetown Gym, Lowe said.

    Meads told the Independent on June 4 that “the whole place is completely fixed now” and that Rowell “had come by to inspect it.” But Provincetown Building Commissioner Anne Howard said on June 5 that she had not received word of any repairs, and that the building still did not have a certificate of occupancy. Troyan confirmed that the property managers have not yet requested an inspection from the health dept.

    The Second Storm

    A month and a half after the tenant moved into the unit at 27 Bradford, a rainstorm on April 16 and a leaking roof created a hole in the ceiling above the kitchen, causing yet another cascade into the tenant’s living quarters.

    Damage in the ceiling at 27 Bradford St. from the April rainstorm.

    Again, he contacted Meads, this time asking to have the roof repaired. Meads showed up at the tenant’s apartment on April 21. According to a police report of the incident, “Meads threatened to have her boyfriend, Robert Martin, go to the tenant’s apartment on Bradford St., throw his belongings onto the street, and damage the tenant’s car.” Lowe said that Meads told the tenant that Martin would “smash his car, and then smash him” if he went to the board of health again.

    Meads said that the police report is “all lies,” and that the tenant “was never threatened. I told him, ‘You’re on your own.’ ”

    After his encounter with Meads, the tenant patched the ceiling himself, Lowe said.

    Six days later, on April 27, an official notice to quit arrived at the tenant’s doorstep from McEneaney’s attorney, Anthony Alva of Barnstable. It demanded that the tenant vacate the property by June 1. The reason for eviction, according to the document, was that the rental “needs repairs.” The document said that the tenant’s occupancy was “incidental to his employment, which he quit.”

    The tenant repaired the ceiling himself after being threatened by landlord.

    The notice also stated: “The Landlord provided this current rental after he made false claims to the Housing Court after he created flooding conditions at 7 Standish Street.”

    Alva did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    According to Lowe, McEneaney’s notice to quit is a clear violation of the law. In Massachusetts, a landlord cannot evict a tenant within six months of the tenant’s exercising his legal rights. This includes reporting possible violations to the board of health or other officials. Both the tenant’s report to the board of health on Feb. 6 and to the Provincetown police on April 21 fall within the six-month period.

    “It’s a retaliatory eviction, and it’s clearly illegal,” Lowe said. “McEneaney is a bully and a slumlord.”

    Lowe added that “whether they are going to proceed in court, I have yet to see. But if they do, they are going to be hit with a lot of counterclaims.”

    The tenant told the Independent that “every day I wake up afraid that I am going hear a knock on my door. I’m fighting to be a part of this community.”

    UPDATE

    For Napi’s Renters and Others Facing Eviction, Stakes Are High

    Leaving and staying can both have dire consequences

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Eileen Spence was racing to find a new home on the last day of August. She and four other former Napi’s Restaurant employees had until the end of the day to vacate their apartments, all owned by the late restaurant owner’s estate, but after surveying most of the Outer Cape’s affordable housing complexes, they could only get their names on waitlists.

    “There really is no housing available whatsoever on the Lower and Outer Cape right now,” said Hadley Luddy, the CEO of the Homeless Prevention Council in Orleans. “Getting off waitlists can take anywhere from three to ten years.”

    Strapped for options, Spence plans on “riding out the storm,” staying put in her Freeman Street apartment until she’s able to secure a new place — or until she finds herself in court. “Give me some more time,” she plans to tell the judge, “and some more leniency.”

    None of the other four former Napi’s staff members who were ordered to vacate their homes by the executor of the estate has been able to find housing either, they said this week.

    Andrew O’Dell, regional director of the Tenancy Preservation Program, said that tenants whose leases are being terminated face a dilemma: stay until they can find a new place to live and deal with the legal implications, or face homelessness. Each choice can have dire consequences.

    The Tenancy Preservation Program (TPP) is a neutral party service provided by the Mass. Housing Court that works with landlords, tenants, social service agencies, and the courts to resolve eviction cases involving tenants whose cases involve disabilities. According to the state website, TPP attempts to maintain the tenancy, but if it cannot be preserved, the program “coordinates the tenant’s transition to a more appropriate placement, preventing homelessness whenever possible.” The program has existed since 1999, but its services became available to Barnstable County only in 2019, when Cape housing court cases were moved from Plymouth to Barnstable.

    O’Dell explained that tenants who choose to remain in their rented homes past the expiration of their tenancy run the risk of being formally evicted. Although they may keep a roof over their heads in the short term while they search for another place to live, that decision can threaten their ability to find housing in the future. Evictions are public information and remain on one’s record indefinitely.

    “A place becomes available and, within a few hours, you’ve got hundreds of applicants flying in,” said O’Dell. “Just thinking logically, a landlord sees an applicant with an eviction against him — they’re putting that one aside.”

    O’Dell said that when the choice for tenants is between jeopardizing all their future prospects for housing by staying or leaving their homes at a time when finding a year-round rental is virtually impossible, some decide to leave, even if they have no place to go. “Many will go to stay with a relative or friend, couch surf, or sometimes live in their car,” he said. “It definitely happens.”

    It is unclear whether formal eviction proceedings have been initiated against Napi’s tenants. Bernard McEneaney, the trustee of the Van Dereck estate, and Anthony Alva, the attorney who delivered the notices to quit to the tenants, have not responded to the Independent’s repeated phone calls seeking comment.

    Spence and four other tenants received 30-day eviction notices on July 31. Their tenancy officially ended on Aug. 31. In the month following an eviction notice, many landlords and tenants agree on a later date when the tenant will vacate, O’Dell said.

    All five of the former Napi’s employees are Jamaican. They all say they have not had any contact with either McEneaney or Alva since receiving their notices in July.

    They were all tenants for over a decade of Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, the late founder of Napi’s Restaurant and a prominent landlord in Provincetown. Four of the renters, Delroy Brennan, Dwight Sangster, Ellis Wilson Sr., and Kay Spence, worked at the restaurant the entire time they rented from Van Dereck up until last year. They all said they were fired; McEneaney said they were not fired but had quit their jobs.

    Some of the eviction notices list employment at Napi’s as a precondition of tenancy. Eileen Spence, who rented from Van Dereck starting in 2009 but worked in other places, said that was never a requirement. “I was only there for four months doing a little busing [in 2020], and I had been renting for 12 years prior,” she said.

    Kay Spence and Sangster, two former Napi’s employees who are in a relationship, are still searching for accommodations for themselves and their two children. Likewise, Wilson is juggling a housing hunt for his own family while doing custodial work. Delroy Brennan said he is working from 5 a.m. until 2 a.m. the next day, seven days a week, as a cab driver and hasn’t had luck finding a place either.

    A landlord who decides to pursue eviction of a tenant who has not vacated after the end of a tenancy can file in either district or housing court. O’Dell recommends that tenants summoned to district court have their cases transferred to housing court. “It’s in their best interest,” he said. By providing mediators trained to resolve housing disputes, the Southeast District Housing Court, which serves Barnstable County, can help landlords and tenants come to a “reasonable agreement” and keep cases from going to trial, he said.

    A trial before a judge, by contrast, may amount to “throwing your fate to the gods,” O’Dell said. Most landlords are represented by attorneys — but most tenants are not.

    EVICTION DEADLINE

    Former Napi’s Workers Still Have Nowhere to Go

    Manager Sabuda said he wanted no Black employees, Jamaicans charge

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — With seven days remaining before the Aug. 31 deadline on their eviction notices, five former employees of Napi’s Restaurant still had nowhere to go as of Tuesday this week.

    Delroy Brennan and Ellis Wilson said that in the preceding week the general manager at Napi’s, Dan Sabuda, has tried to get them to leave even before the 31st, telling them that their apartments were already supposed to be vacated. Wilson said that Sabuda had showed up one night after midnight “banging on the door,” and that his family is “afraid.”

    One of the renters, former Napi’s dishwasher Kay Spence, told the Independent, “It’s not like we want to stay here — it’s just that we can’t find anywhere else.”

    Spence and Dwight Sangster have looked for housing as far away as Brewster. Another renter, Eileen Spence, said she inquired at Nauset Green, which offers affordable units in Eastham, and was told to check back in the winter.

    The renters, all Jamaican, received eviction letters at the end of July. Bernard McEneaney, executor of the Van Dereck estate, said the five are being evicted because they no longer work at the restaurant. McEneaney, Napi Van Dereck’s longtime financial adviser, stated that the housing, owned by the estate, has always been contingent on employment at Napi’s. The renters dispute McEneaney’s contention that their housing was conditional on working at Napi’s.

    Marie Boni, a former office employee at Napi’s Restaurant who worked under both Van Dereck and McEneaney, also contradicts McEneaney’s assertion. “That was never conditional,” she said. “It was never implied you had to work there.” Boni was fired by McEneaney in 2020.

    McEneaney said that the five former employees quit their jobs. But the Jamaicans all said they were fired, and two of them said it was done in an explicitly discriminatory way. Dwight Sangster and Craig Parks, another former employee, each said that Sabuda had told them he wanted no Black people working in the restaurant.

    McEneaney and Sabuda did not respond to the Independent’s requests for comment this week on the charges made by the Jamaican tenants. Anthony Alva, the Hyannis attorney whose office delivered the eviction notices for McEneaney, was contacted by phone but declined to comment.

    After Aug. 31, if the tenants are still occupying the apartments, McEneaney may file a complaint in Orleans District Court. A judge could then order the tenants to vacate by a certain date. In instances where there is a verbal lease agreement, or at least no evidence of a written lease, as in this case, there are “not a whole lot of defenses” for tenants, said Hyannis attorney Michael Pierce.

    Pierce, who lists landlord-tenant disputes among his specialties, said that the federal eviction moratorium, renewed earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control, offers protection to most tenants, but that “there’s a lot of interpretation as to its scope.”

    The Supreme Court will likely soon hear a case brought by a group of landlords in Alabama and Georgia asking to strike down the moratorium. On Aug. 20, a federal appeals court upheld it, but since that ruling the landlords have asked the Supreme Court to step in to block it.

    Although the Supreme Court upheld the last moratorium in a 5-4 ruling in June, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority then, has recently said he believed the CDC overstepped its jurisdiction.

    The current CDC moratorium replaced the earlier eviction ban, which lapsed in July. The current one covers areas of the country experiencing “substantial and high levels” of Covid transmission, including Barnstable County.

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 3.5 million people say they face eviction in the next two months.

    PROBATE

    They Worked for Napi for Years; Now They’re Being Evicted

    After being fired by new management, they say, Jamaican workers must leave longtime homes

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, the late art collector and owner of Napi’s Restaurant, had no children. But Ellis Wilson, he often told friends, was “the son he never had.”

    Wilson, 46, came to Provincetown from Jamaica for the first time in 2006 to work at Angel Foods. He got a second job as a dishwasher at Napi’s, and Van Dereck provided him with a place to live. Summer after summer, Wilson returned, eventually bringing his family with him in 2016.

    In 2011, Napi helped Wilson apply for a green card, granted two years later, allowing him and his family to live permanently in Provincetown. Wilson worked his way up at the restaurant, eventually taking over maintenance of Napi’s dozen or more properties across town.

    For decades, Napi helped many other Jamaicans establish lives in Provincetown. Now, less than two years after his death, those lives are being uprooted.

    In May, Wilson said, he was fired by those in charge of Napi’s estate because he had taken a second job during the pandemic. He was told he would have to leave his apartment, where he lives with his wife and three sons.

    Four other Jamaican employees, including three who worked for Napi for almost 20 years, say they also were fired.

    Dan Sabuda, the current manager at Napi’s, refused multiple requests to be interviewed for this article. But Berni McEneaney of Marstons Mills, Napi’s longtime financial adviser and the executor of his estate, has denied that anyone was fired. In a phone call on Monday, McEneaney said, “Nobody was let go from Napi’s. Period.”

    Instead, he said, the former employees voluntarily stopped working at the restaurant when it reopened in May. “In all cases, they were not available to come back,” he said.

    The former employees all contradict McEneaney’s denial.

    “We did not quit,” said Tony Cleary, the former kitchen manager and a tenant of Napi’s for 19 years. “We did not leave the restaurant. We were all fired and evicted.”

    An Aug. 31 Deadline

    Ellis Wilson began looking for new housing but found nothing. At the end of July, he received an eviction notice from McEneaney’s lawyer. He has until Aug. 31 to vacate his apartment at 5 Freeman St.

    “I just want to protect my family and get out of there,” said Wilson. He said he doesn’t know what he will do if he can’t find housing.

    Wilson is one of seven Jamaican employees who told the Independent they had already been or are currently being evicted from housing provided by Van Dereck. Of those, five say they were fired around the time the restaurant reopened last spring.

    A part of “Napi-ville,” the complex of units at 25-27A Bradford St. where Napi Van Dereck provided housing for his restaurant workers. (Photo Ben Glickman)

    Napi and his wife, Helen Haunstrup, founded Napi’s in 1978. They built it from the remains of garages where the two ran a flea market on Freeman Street.

    Napi was known for bringing Jamaican workers to Provincetown. He provided rental housing in more than a dozen properties he owned, including ones on Bradford and Freeman streets, next to the restaurant.

    Napi died on Christmas Day 2019. His will specified that Helen assume control of all his property, including the restaurant, apartments, and a sizable art collection. A 2021 court document valued the Van Dereck estate at over $18 million.

    Shortly after Napi’s death, a legal battle began over control of the estate, and over his wife’s care. Helen, 81, was diagnosed with dementia in 2018, according to court documents. In January 2020, her primary care physician stated that she was no longer able to manage the business or her finances. Judy Saffron, Napi’s half-sister, and McEneaney both sought legal control in probate court.

    McEneaney won and was appointed conservator of the estate by Judge Arthur C. Ryley. The case regarding the guardianship of Helen Haunstrup, however, is ongoing.

    Documents from the conservatorship case show that McEneaney argued that he understood and would adhere to Helen’s wishes better than anyone else. His representative made the case that McEneaney could run the restaurant in the same way that Napi and Helen had done for decades, in order to support Helen’s well-being as well as Napi’s legacy.

    “It was important to them to provide folks in the community year-round employment and housing…. This is evident by the number of long-term employees they have,” reads one letter submitted in the conservatorship case. “They did not have children; their employees and customers are their family and community.”

    ‘Everything Is Lies’

    The former employees were evicted because their housing was provided only as long as they worked at the restaurant, McEneaney said this week. That has always been the way it worked, he added, including when Van Dereck was alive.

    McEneaney declined to comment on individual cases, citing the legal implications of divulging workers’ information and the fact that he is not involved with the “day-to-day operations” at the restaurant.

    Responding to a phone call attempting to reach Sabuda, office assistant Lisa Meads said of the Jamaicans, “I don’t want to waste our time on those people. Everything is lies.” Anthony Alva, the attorney retained by McEneaney to carry out the evictions, did not respond to requests for comment.

    The Independent spoke to nine former employees at Napi’s Restaurant who had recently left their housing or are now under threat of eviction, including Dwight Sangster, who worked in the kitchen. Wilson and Sangster both received letters ordering them to vacate their properties and stating that “your occupancy … was entirely arranged and contingent upon your employment by Napi’s Restaurant.”

    The Independent also obtained eviction notices and other letters from four of the former employees. Only one — sent to Delroy Brennan, who worked in the kitchen for 19 years — cites a cause. Brennan’s notice stated that he was $1,200 behind on rent and that he had 14 days to vacate his apartment at 7 Standish St.

    A June 17 cease-and-desist letter sent by attorney Alva to Sangster alleges that he was illegally subletting his unit without permission and living with Kay Spence, who had worked as a dishwasher since 2016 and is in a relationship with Sangster. Spence disputes this: she says that Sangster had allowed several family members to stay with him briefly, and occasionally stayed with her.

    An eviction notice sent to Sangster, dated July 30, does not mention this allegation or any other cause.

    Eviction Moratorium Could Help

    A new federal eviction moratorium announced by ​​the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Aug. 3, replacing the previous moratorium that expired Aug. 1, protects renters living in communities experiencing substantial or high transmission of Covid-19. That includes the Outer Cape.

    According to attorney Michael Pierce of Hyannis, who specializes in landlord-tenant disputes, the moratorium should protect tenants from eviction in almost all cases, unless “they endanger the health and safety of other tenants.” But “the moratorium is new and open to interpretation, and so there is a lot up in the air,” he said.

    Several long-tenured employees say they were informed in May, when Napi’s reopened after being closed since December 2020, that they were being let go. Brennan was informed by phone in May that he was no longer on the schedule. Spence was asked about her availability in May but was never contacted again.

    Kevin Linsey learned he had been fired from a notice left on his car, which was parked at Napi’s. It read: “Private Parking. After today You will be towed.”

    Linsey, who had worked and rented from Van Dereck for 19 years, said neither Sabuda nor Meads would admit to leaving the notice, but that neither questioned its implication: he was no longer an employee. Other employees said they had similar notices placed on their vehicles.

    Of the seven who face eviction, five have not found new places to live.

    Eileen Spence, who worked at Napi’s for several months in 2020 but rented her Freeman Street apartment from Van Dereck since 2009, received an eviction notice on July 31. She must vacate her apartment by the end of August. “I don’t know where to turn right now,” she said. “Maybe I’m going to be on the street.”

    Spence said her apartment was never tied to employment at the restaurant. “Napi would never do something like this,” she said. “They’re just using brute force and trying to manipulate people.”

    Tony Cleary, the former kitchen manager, showed the Independent a text he received from Lisa Meads during an exchange following his termination: “Good luck to you and your minions!” she wrote. “Why don’t you all move to an island with the thief Judy!”

    “Judy” is Napi’s half-sister, Judy Saffron, who said she also was ordered out of the apartment Napi had provided for her when he asked her to come to Provincetown to help care for Helen in 2018, more than a year before he died.

    Cleary said, “We all feel like we’ve been betrayed.”

    REMEMBERING NAPI

    Friends Reflect On Napi Van Dereck

    By

    Napi Van Dereck’s Single-Minded Pursuit

    Peppery, garrulous, ebullient, discerning, resourceful, crafty, steeped in local lore, and deeply rooted on the Outer Cape, Napi Van Dereck may have looked like an ornery eccentric, but he had the instincts of a master. He, his wife, Helen, and a crew of imaginative artists and artisans — Jackson Lambert, Conrad Malicoat, Frank Milby, and Bob Baker among them — turned a bunch of dilapidated garages off Freeman Street into a restaurant that has been in business since 1975.

    More than a restaurant, however, Napi’s is also a rich showcase of Provincetown artwork. The Van Derecks’ unmatched collection is the product of his single-minded pursuit over the decades of figurative paintings that speak directly to the history of the town, especially its wharves and boatyards.
    You can’t survive in Provincetown as long as Napi did without ruffling some feathers, or getting a few of your own trimmed.

    But as a host, he was utterly beguiling and generous. If he caught you perusing a canvas, he might amble over to tell you its story; identifying the schooner or pier or cottage you were looking at, explaining why the structure took the form it did, telling tales about the people whose lives intersected it, and fitting it all into the greater Provincetown panorama.

    And, thanks to Napi, there was always a story. —David W. Dunlap

    Never to Be Equaled

    It was such a treat to discover a unique painting, show it to Napi, then learn all about the story behind the subject. Whenever I found something special, I’d give him a call and his booming voice would soon appear at the door. Recently I called him about a small painting by Vollian Rann of Chesco’s Restaurant, which used to be right across from my gallery on Bradford Street.

    I’ve known Napi since he returned to town and built Napi’s with his wife, Helen, his brother, Moe, the artist and musician, and my brother-in-law, the artist Bill Fitts. (Bill and Moe built many bulkheads along the waterfront.) According to Josephine Del Deo, Napi’s mother, the artist “Pat” Van Dereck Saffron, was the first to suggest an artist’s residency that led to the formation of the Fine Arts Work Center, with founders including Salvatore and Josephine Del Deo and my parents, Hudson and Ione Walker.

    It is true that any time a guest known to Napi visited the restaurant, Napi would join them, talking about his latest painting acquisition or town story. Sometimes he stayed through the entire meal.

    Napi’s enthusiastic, yes, often bombastic, rambling observations and stories will be missed and will never be equaled. —Berta Walker

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