After years of on-and-off negotiations with the University, popular Cuban restaurant Floridita will reopen in April 2011 at a new location on 125th Street. Owner Ramon Diaz said he has signed a lease on a Columbia-owned building at the corner of 12th Avenue and 125th Street—just two blocks west of his former location on 125th and Broadway, and right next door to the newly relocated Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. If all goes according to plan, the restaurant will reopen almost exactly a year after Columbia, Diaz's landlord, shut down the original location, citing emergency repairs needed to the kitchen floor. According to University spokesperson Victoria Benitez, Diaz signed the lease for the new space in May, but Diaz said his own plans were not certain until this month. He said he had wanted to reopen by now, but logistical delays made that impossible. "We at Floridita sincerely apologize to the community and loyal customers for these unforeseen delays, however, we have been forced to deal with an entity and issues that are out of our control," Diaz wrote in a statement this week. "Despite these challenges, we have resolved to continue to work as hard as we can to reopen and reestablish Floridita within the community that we were proud to serve for 35 years." For more than two years now, Diaz has negotiated with Columbia over his longtime premises on Broadway. The University owns the building, which is part of the Manhattanville campus expansion plan. According to Santiago Carrion, an architectural consultant and project manager for the new Floridita location, Columbia has required the restaurant to take care of maintenance concerns beyond what city codes require, which he said has delayed the opening. Carrion said the University has asked Floridita to implement a system to remove smoke and exhaust after a fire, in addition to a special valve to prevent water contamination—two steps that he said go beyond the New York City Department of Buildings' requirements. "If New York City is OK with it, Columbia should be, and it turns out that's not the case," Diaz told Spectator. The University is overstepping its bounds, Carrion said: "They've delayed the project by double-checking things that would be rechecked ... by the building department." Though University officials did not comment on this specific claim, they released a statement saying, "The University has at every stage fulfilled its promises to achieve this win-win result for Floridita consistent with our responsibility to maintain safe premises for workers and patrons alike." The statement continued, "We work with our commercial tenants to help them understand what permits and approvals they need in order to operate within City Code." Diaz will provide Columbia with information regarding the contractor who will build out the restaurant, it added. "I don't get the sense it's taken an unusually long period of time," Columbia Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin said in an interview earlier this month. "We look forward to Floridita completing its relocation and hope it prospers as a business going forward." maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com