Man, this is not what Asheville needs right now.

That was my first thought when I read about the legal battle between Orange Peel Events/Public Interest Projects and Asheville Pizza & Brewing (which now goes by Ninja Brewing).

If you haven’t been following, Ninja Brewing announced Jan. 8 via social media it was rebranding the downtown Rabbit Rabbit concert venue as Asheville Yards Amphitheater, promising more shows, family entertainment, events and the debut of a skating rink in November.

It sounded pretty great, really — until the lawsuit was announced. That pretty much blew up any feel-good buzz the skating rink idea engendered — and that was a pretty good hunk of feel-good buzz.

Hey, Asheville hasn’t had a skating rink since the winter of 2008-09, when the city’s minor league hockey team left town, and people really want a rink. The nearest one is in Greenville, South Carolina, a city that often eats our lunch on entertainment offerings.

I hate that this disagreement has gone to court — and of course been energetically debated in the court of public opinion, A.K.A. social media. 

These parties are part of Asheville’s entertainment and business bedrock.

I like and respect all these folks involved, and the venues. I’ve seen several shows at Rabbit Rabbit, which is a cool outdoor spot right next to Asheville Pizza & Brewing’s Coxe Avenue location. Asheville Pizza has some of the best pizza in town and some very fine beers.

Over the years I’ve taken in many shows and events at the Orange Peel, too, and I consider it a real gem of a venue. 

I’ve known Ninja Brewing owner Mike Rangel for 20 years or more, and I saw what a great friend he was to the late, great Citizen Times beer and entertainment writer Tony Kiss, who died in August 2023 after several years of heartbreaking decline. Tony’s wake was held at Rabbit Rabbit, and I was the informal emcee.

Pat Whalen, president of Public Interest Projects, and his daughter, Liz Whalen Tallent, marketing and special events director at the Orange Peel, are highly regarded around here, and with good reason. In talking with Tallent over the years, it’s always been clear what a deep passion and love she has for Asheville, much like her father. 

Public Interest Projects, founded in 1991, is a for-profit development company founded by the late local philanthropist Julian Price and Whalen, then Price’s attorney, to boost downtown Asheville’s comeback. PIP has funded all kinds of downtown restoration projects, and our city would not have enjoyed the renaissance it did without PIP.

So nobody wanted to see such a public and contentious spat. 

A complicated case

And this lawsuit does get real ugly, real quick. It’s an extremely complicated case, which is why a North Carolina business court will have to handle it.

The lawsuit Orange Peel Events and Public Interest Projects filed notes that PIP and what is now known as Ninja Brewing formed a partnership in 2019 called “75 Coxe Properties LLC,” to buy 75 Coxe Avenue property (now Asheville Yards), for $2.5 million.

Tallent and the Orange Peel formed Orange Peel Events to book and manage outdoor shows. Public Interest Projects is “the sole member of Orange Peel Events,” according to the lawsuit.

Public Interest Projects owns 50 percent of 75 Coxe Properties, Ninja Brewing the other half. 

The lawsuit states that Ninja Brewing was responsible for managing and staffing the daily operation of the pizza and beer operation at Rabbit Rabbit, while Orange Peel Events was responsible for “managing and producing large-crowd, ticketed live music shows with nationally known artists.”

Ninja Brewing leases the real estate under a 10-year contract, which Orange Peel Events and Public Interest Project claim is based on “misrepresentations by Ninja’s agents about North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control law requirements.” The plaintiffs make quite a few more unflattering allegations about Ninja Brewing, including:   

• Ninja Brewing was in a “precarious financial situation in and around the time the parties entered into their agreement for the joint project, and this situation only grew worse as the project progressed.” The lawsuit suggests Ninja Brewing was close to “insolvency.”

• Ninja Brewing “willfully and deliberately misreported their sales, costs and expenses, relied on Orange Peel Events and Public Interest Projects to handle effectively all aspects” of the Rabbit Rabbit project, and “failed to recognize OPE’s legitimate costs and expenses, to the benefit of Ninja/ABP, and to the detriment of OPE and PIP.”

• Ninja Brewing converted $170,000 belonging to the joint project in an “effort to prop up their own failing finances, had the use and benefit of these monies for a period of nine months, only eventually repaying these sums after repeated demands from PIP.”

• Public Interest Projects and Orange Peel Events also allege Ninja Brewing blindsided them by contacting business competitors about booking shows and was “actively working to terminate Orange Peel Events” from management of performances at Rabbit Rabbit. Ninja terminated the management agreement with Orange Peel Events on Dec. 31, but OPE wants that “purported termination” enjoined in court.

As you might expect, Ninja Brewing disputes all of these claims, and it says it was entitled to that $170,000 under their operating agreement. In fact, Ninja Brewing says the two plaintiffs withheld $1.1 million from it over the years.

Ninja Brewing’s Rangel filed an affidavit and answers to the allegations, offering point-by-point rebuttals. Rangel and his lawyer bristle at the notion that Ninja Brewing was close to insolvency, and they’re equally adamant that Ninja Brewing had the right to terminate Orange Peel Events’ management role. 

In part, Ninja Brewing’s affidavit states:

• “Ninja and Asheville Brewing Properties are not insolvent, were not insolvent, and have never been close to insolvent as alleged in the complaint.  

• “Under the terms of the Management Agreement, once Ninja gave timely notice of termination, OPE had no rights whatsoever to impede or prohibit [Ninja]’s rights to negotiate with potential replacement management companies.”

• In late November 2024, “months after giving timely notice of termination to Orange Peel Events, Ninja entered a contract with a new management entity to produce live shows at Asheville Yards for 2025 and subsequent years. The plaintiffs learned about the contract with the new management entity in December of 2024.”

Rangel and Ninja Brewing maintain that Orange Peel Events just wasn’t bringing in enough shows and events to Rabbit Rabbit, which typically hovered around 20 a year. In talking with Tallent, she noted that the venue had noise ordinance variance permits for only 30 concerts a year.

Regarding that $1.1 million Rangel says Orange Peel Events and PIP have withheld from Ninja Brewing, his legal filings and talking points state that was “an attempt to starve Ninja’s cash flow and force us to sell Rabbit Rabbit to them at a lower price or agree to drastically change our contracts in their favor.”

Orange Peel Events disputes Ninja’s Brewing’s allegations.

Rangel also says Asheville Yards will now be an “open venue,” meaning it will “be open to local promoters as well as any other promoters regionally or nationally. This will increase the number of events and opportunities.”

Rangel has hired a public relations guy to help out, and Tallent wanted to run any official comment by their lawyer first. I get it, but I hate it’s come to that kind of stilted communication.

In the talking points, Rangel said Ninja entered a new management agreement Dec. 6 “to significantly increase programming.

“Ninja Brewing hired Orange Peel Events to produce live events,” Rangel said. “After four years it was clear that Orange Peel Events was unable and/or unwilling to produce enough events.”

Rangel and his legal team also say Ninja Brewing spent “over a year trying to find a resolution or co-existence solution with no luck.”

‘Truly saddened’ 

It all gets much more complicated and testy, and some of this legal war comes under the “he said/she said” category.

This imbroglio has been tough to watch, and I suspect it’s even tougher as a participant. I talked to both Rangel and Liz Whalen Tallent in lengthy off-the-record conversations — off the record because they have to be careful with the ongoing legalities — and I could tell neither is feeling real great about any of this.

Tallent’s official statement touched on the emotion involved in all of this.

“On behalf of Orange Peel Events, I am truly saddened by the efforts to end the brand and joint project known as Rabbit Rabbit, which my team worked tirelessly to develop from an empty bank parking lot to a thriving, nationally known outdoor venue over the last five years,” Tallent said. “Our team painstakingly developed every detail of the venue and remain so proud of what the OPE krewe accomplished.”

Tallent said they went into the Rabbit Rabbit project “fully committed to work as hard as we could” to make the venue a success, just as the contract called for. 

“Even when disagreements arose over costs after the 2023 season, we at Orange Peel Events made every effort to settle the matter internally with our partners, and to avoid a legal conflict, but unfortunately (we) learned in early December that Ninja had committed to remove us and work with an outside third party instead,” Tallent said.

Orange Peel Events remains committed to continue “operating great live music brands” in Asheville, she said.

“Orange Peel Events has always upheld our commitment to Rabbit Rabbit,” Tallent said. “We never expected to find ourselves in a public legal dispute and tried until the end to protect ourselves, our co-operators and our community from it, but we are hopeful that a fair and satisfactory resolution can be reached via the legal process.”

On Friday, Rangel’s public relations guy, Kyle Parks, said the case is still active.

“And as we have talked about, things are going well at the Yards, and we are focused on getting great shows, and working with the community to schedule events, etc.,” Parks said.

I’m not going to sit here and say who’s right and who’s wrong in this dispute. Judge Boyle is definitely not on the case. I think both sides have some valid points, and both sides clearly feel slighted.

I sincerely hope they can settle this matter outside the courtroom, but I’m not optimistic.

And that’s not great for anybody, especially not for post-Helene Asheville.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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