As authorities continue to investigate a mass shooting that left four dead at a children’s party in north Stockton, missing business documents and conflicting details raise questions about the event space that was the scene of the party.
Local officials said there were no current business licenses or permits for that address, and they are currently investigating a complaint about a business operating there without proper permits.
The owner of the commercial property at 1943 Lucile Ave. told Stocktonia that the company leasing the site didn’t have his permission to hold large parties there.
But a man who said he was the operator of the event location, Monkey Space, disputed that claim, and said he had pursued proper business permits. The tragedy has also meant the end of his business, he added.
Who ran Monkey Space?
Four young people were killed — including three children — and 13 were injured over the Thanksgiving weekend when assailants opened fire at a child’s birthday party.
A family was hosting a large gathering on Nov. 29 for a 2-year-old at Monkey Space, a little-known new venue inside the former home of a children’s theater troupe. The low-slung building sits in a tiny county-controlled pocket of Stockton off Thornton Road.
County records show the commercial building belongs to a company called American Golden Property.
Vinod Kumar of American Golden told Stocktonia that he did not know his tenant was holding large parties at the venue, describing such events as a violation of the lease agreement. He said the property was leased to a limited liability company called Vertical Compass.
State records show Vertical Compass LLC operating at several addresses in Grass Valley, north of Sacramento. Those records list the CEO and manager as Fallon Herbert. Herbert is also listed in state records for several other businesses; at least one of those businesses has listed another officer named Willie Collins.
State records also show Herbert as the registered agent or CEO for a nonprofit called RichFriend Foundation, which was previously listed at one of the Grass Valley addresses associated with Vertical Compass. In November, state records show the nonprofit changed its listed address to 1943 Lucile Ave. in Stockton.
Some of those records identify Willie Collins as another officer with RichFriend. A man who identified himself as Collins said in a phone interview that he was the head of Monkey Space.
Collins said the events-space business was organized through a nonprofit.
He said the property owner knew all about his business plans in Stockton.
“Kumar knew what we were doing there. He knew what events were being done there,” Collins said.
Neither Collins nor Kumar agreed to make a copy of the lease available for Stocktonia to review.
What was Monkey Space?
In an Instagram post from October, Collins described himself as “straight outta Stockton.” He said Monkey Space is “a content creation compound.”
The project “is a multifaceted facility where you’re gonna be able to have a one-stop shop, everything is built in to be able to help artists and create connections and be a hub for a piece of the pie in California,” he said.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Collins attended the Drivon School of Law and Business Management and has had a lengthy career in the music industry.
A listing for the event venue on Peerspace, which is like Airbnb for event and meeting spaces, showed it was available for rent by the hour. The listing was taken down sometime after the shooting.
A Peerspace spokesperson, in a statement, said the company had no record of a booking at the Monkey Space address on the weekend of the shooting. The company said it “learned about the incident via media reports” and deactivated the listing.
Authorities have put the number of people at the party at between 100 and 150.
In a phone interview with Stocktonia, Collins would not say whether he had been at the events space the day of the shooting.
What regulations applied to Monkey Space?
The city of Stockton does not have jurisdiction over the Lucile Avenue location, which has a Stockton address but is in an unincorporated county pocket.
Even outside the city limits, an events space may require state- or county-level permits; it’s not clear what permits Monkey Space would have required.
There’s no indication that the status of a license or permit for Monkey Space had any relationship to the November shooting.
Collins, in a phone interview with Stocktonia, said that Monkey Space had worked to secure the necessary permits.
“We didn’t know that we were in a county pocket, so we applied through the city,” he said. “Then we worked to get the proper paperwork through the county.”
Employees at the county’s Community Development Department said RichFriend had requested a business license in October and had been sent an invoice, but the invoice was never paid, so the license was not issued.
County spokesperson Hilary Crowley said that on Nov. 5, the county received a complaint about a business on the site operating without proper permits, but would not elaborate on the complaint. “This investigation is ongoing,” Crowley said in an email.
Crowley said the Development Department could not comment on whether an entertainment permit had been issued at the location, “since the County never received a request to operate any business at that location.” When asked about the Development Department’s record of a business license application, Crowley declined to comment.
Vertical Compass LLC holds a business registration from the California Secretary of State and a processed food registration from the state health department, but has no apparent Stockton-area licenses.
In a phone interview after the shooting, Collins said he would provide Stocktonia with documents showing his efforts to secure the permits. By the following week, no such documents had arrived.
On Monday night, just over two weeks after the shooting, the building that housed Monkey Space appeared empty. A set of printed pages was taped to the red front door, addressed to Collins and Vertical Compass, demanding unpaid rent from December. Reached again by phone Tuesday, Collins said he was aware of the papers, and that he had no comment.
Another set of papers outlined the landlord’s claims that the tenant had been operating an un-licensed business and failed to maintain insurance. “You are hereby instructed,” the last pages read, “to vacate the premises.”
Cassie Dickman and Scott Linesburgh of Stocktonia contributed to this report.
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