An affiliate of Byndfit, a planned Washington, D.C., fitness center that said it would "revolutionize" the industry, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy amid a lawsuit filed by its Chinatown landlord that seeks to evict the tenant from the building and collect millions in what it alleges is unpaid rent, the Washington Business Journal reported. BF Chinatown LLC, a Byndfit affiliate created to operate a location on the ground floor of Terrell Place, an office building at 650 F St. NW across from Capital One Arena, filed for bankruptcy protection Aug. 30 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Alexandria, per court documents. It filed just before midnight Aug. 31, when D.C. Superior Court was scheduled to hold a hearing related to its landlord’s motion for damages and to reclaim the space, court documents show. That location was to be launched in early 2020 as the first of several from the company and its co-founders, including Ryan Macaulay and Raymond Rahbar, according to a countercomplaint that BF Chinatown filed hours before it filed for bankruptcy protection. That plan hit delays due to the pandemic, per media reports. Today, the building owner, an affiliate of Beacon Capital Partners called Terrell Place Property LLC, claims it's owed more than $4 million in rent, related fees and other holdover costs, according to its Aug. 22 court filing. A Superior Court judge issued a protective order earlier in the year requiring BF Chinatown to begin making a series of payments into the court registry in order to remain in the space while the case was being litigated. Terrell Place claimed in court documents that the tenant had neither made those payments nor relinquished the space, and in mid-August, the court granted a motion imposing sanctions against the fitness firm for failing to comply with the court-imposed protective order.
