The Orange Men of District XI Demand Rio and Zöld Pardon Cough Up the Green

The District XI council raised the yearly rents for popular outdoor clubs Zöld Pardon and Café del Rió by 400%, from Ft 9 million to Ft 38 million (€34,000 to €142,5000), apparently without warning. Both rent contracts were set to expire in December of this year, and the district notary proposed that they be extended, with the rents remaining unchanged. The majority of the local assembly, however, voted on February 17 to support a proposal by a Fidesz representative who argued the clubs should be required to pay four times their current rent. Zöld Pardon and Rió have used public space illegally at the Buda end of Petőfi Bridge for years, occupying roughly four times the area they signed contracts for, in what has been rumored to be some backdoor deal with District XI mayor Gyula Molnár. When the local government discovered that the clubs were using four times the area they were paying for, they came to a mostly Fidesz-passed decision that the clubs should pay a fine of Ft 1 billion (€3.7 million), but this plan has mostly petered out over the past few months over disagreements within the local council. If plans go through to raise rents, we suspect the Rio just might have to rethink their not-so-multicultural door policy. [index.hu]