After fire, cigar lounge vows to rise from ashes
Mi Havana Cigar Lounge opened with fanfare in February, touted as the largest cigar lounge in California (at 4,800 square feet), and in an unlikely location: not West Hollywood, not San Francisco, but Pomona.
“Our thinking was, why not Pomona? Why not outdo Beverly Hills? We could offer something for the blue-collar person,” co-owner Roy Kwon told me recently. Monthly subscriptions ranged from
$35 a month up to $250, a tier that gave access to the expansive third-floor lounge, named the (ooooh) Platinum Room.
Mi Havana was off to a strong start, signing up 400 subscribers and pulling in $40,000 a month in subscriptions alone, Kwon said.
Then, in early May, the cigar lounge went up in smoke.
Don’t blame a stogie. A homeless man was setting fires for fun in trash cans around downtown Pomona in the wee hours, including in a dumpster in the alley behind Mi Havana’s 261 S. Thomas St. building. Flames leaped 40 feet and entered a rear window on the third floor that was open for ventilation purposes.
No one was present, thankfully. The Platinum Room got so hot, the ceiling tiles melted and windows cracked.
The Fire Department entered by chopping a hole in the roof. The fire was extinguished. But with fire, smoke and water damage to the structure and its plumbing and electrical systems, Mi Havana is closed indefinitely.
The exterior looks unchanged but the interior needs an unknown amount of work. The city red-tagged the building May 5, the notice on the door reading “Unsafe to Occupy” due to “severe fire damage to structure.”
“Apparently, this was the first fire they’d had in downtown Pomona that anyone in the Fire Department could remember,” Kwon said ruefully. “The insurance company deemed it a $2 million loss.”
He’s covered for only $500,000.
“I had no motive to burn that place, my goodness,” Kwon said, shaking his head. “I was underinsured.”
A structural engineer has surveyed the damage with plans due this week for Kwon to lay out what
needs to be done and what it will cost. Kwon plans to forge ahead no matter what.
So many people had doubted the venture, but in 84 days of operation, “we proved everybody wrong,” Kwon said proudly.
“I’m going to rebuild regardless,” Kwon told me, and laughed. “Now my ego’s involved!”
A 40-year-old Korean American, Kwon grew up in Pomona, other than a period where his parents sent him to boarding school in South Korea “because I messed up a lot here,” he told me. Back in Pomona, he buckled down and worked for his parents’ restaurant, Kwon’s, which they had opened in 1983 on West Holt Avenue.
He flipped homes on the side to make enough money to buy the restaurant from them for $1 million in 2005.
Meanwhile, the building on Thomas Street, built in 1908, had sat empty since 1995. Its last tenant was a restaurant, Benvenuti, whose Ronald Reagan-era sign was still in place when Kwon looked at it as a possible new home for Kwon’s.
After months of getting the runaround from the owner, the Charles Co., Kwon said he paid $750,000 for the building in cash.
“No bank would finance it. It was not inhabitable,” Kwon said.
A caretaker was living on the site and claimed to have no knowledge of the transaction. Before escrow closed, “he demolished everything,” Kwon said. “I had bought it with a full kitchen in there.”
Scratch the restaurant idea. Kwon liked escaping to Mi Havana Cigar House, a small lounge on Locust Street downtown. Owner Raul Reyner and Kwon formed a partnership to open a larger lounge in the Benvenuti building.
The city’s Planning Department was amenable, but uncertainty over how to classify a cigar lounge and what ventilation standards needed to be met delayed things, as did COVID-19, Kwon told me.
In February 2020, I wrote a column lamenting that a half-dozen downtown Pomona buildings were rotting unoccupied, with Benvenuti being the focus. My timing was a little off: Kwon’s contractors were just resuming work.
One reason for the delay: The first contractor “ran off with my $100,000 deposit,” Kwon told me. “That’s another reason I stopped. Man!” he said, bursting into laughter. “I learned everything on one project!”
During renovation, passersby would step inside if the door was open. People were curious. Some remembered Benvenuti. Others had never seen activity there for a generation.
“Finally, somebody is doing something,” one man told Kwon enthusiastically.
Apparently, there had been activity now and then on the sly as the Arts Colony developed downtown. One artist told Kwon that he and his friends would break in, hang their art and invite people in.
“Literally, 50 people would come in and show their art,” the man told Kwon, who replied: “Please don’t do that anymore.”
Kwon also learned some family history. As a new immigrant, his father had painted the exterior — and never been paid.
After an $800,000 renovation, the cigar lounge finally opened on Feb. 12. I’m anti-smoking, but I wanted to meet Kwon, so I introduced myself and apologized for the awkward timing of my original column. He agreed to be interviewed at whatever point I wanted to do it.
In late July, I was nearby to give a lunch talk to a service club and called Kwon to ask if he had time to meet at last. He said he’d meet me at the lounge.
I went to 261 S. Thomas, saw the red-tag notice and reeled. This is how I learned of the fire and that the business was closed. Kwon was waiting for me at the Locust Street lounge, assuming that’s where we were meeting.
I explained sheepishly that I’d contacted him to follow up on my promise to write about his rescue of the building. He waved away my concern and, before launching into his saga, assured me: “This is going to be an even better story for you.”
He wasn’t blowing smoke.
brIEfly
The season finale of HBO’s “Westworld” Aug. 14 climaxed with scenes shot in downtown Pomona. Reader/TV viewer Lisa McPheron reports there was a “fairly postapocalyptic fight till the death scene.” I’m hoping 261 S. Thomas St. was not involved. It’s been through enough.