
[jump] When reached by phone, Julio De La Cruz, a general manager who has been with the business for 26 years, said Genova Delicatessen’s owners are currently negotiating with their landlords. “If they don’t budge, we’ll be left without any other choice but to close,” he said.
According to De La Cruz, the deli’s lease is up at the beginning of June, so the owners will try to make their final decision by April. Genova’s wholesale business, which is run out of a separate manufacturing facility in Oakland, should be unaffected. But De La Cruz said he’s unsure how the company’s second retail shop in Napa, which depends heavily on the Oakland mothership, might be impacted. The Oakland delicatessen alone employs more than twenty people, De La Cruz said.

“It’s a landmark. And that’s what the landlords don’t understand,” De La Cruz said. “Genova is the foundation of Temescal Plaza — of Temescal period.”Â