For years, Mohamad Fakih was one of Mississauga’s favourite sons. Over the last two decades, he built up his Mississauga-based chain of Lebanese restaurants, Paramount Fine Foods, into an international player, with its name on the local stadium. He was awarded the Key to the City and appointed to the Order of Canada. But this week, he and the City of Mississauga had a spectacular falling out.
“It’s like fighting with family,” Fakih said in a lengthy interview with the Star on Friday, after a week of trading barbs in the media with the city and Mayor Carolyn Parrish. “The people of the City of Mississauga are the people I love the most.”
The city announced this week it is unilaterally terminating its partnership with Paramount and renaming the Paramount Fine Foods Centre — home to the Raptors 905 of the NBA G League — because the company allegedly owes the city $1.6 million.
But Fakih says he believes the relationship started to unravel over a misunderstanding about one of his videos on social media, and has now devolved into a bruising public feud with the mayor.
“It’s not between me and the city,” he said. “It’s between me and Carolyn Parrish.”
Fakih said he posted a video to Instagram and X on Monday, recorded outside the Paramount Fine Foods Centre, announcing that “we’ve made the decision to conclude our sponsorship” of the stadium.
Behind the scenes, he said both sides were close to a deal that would mutually surrender the naming rights and see Paramount repay fees and a portion of concession sales — debts that Fakih said were incurred before he regained control of his company last year following a protracted dispute with his largest shareholder.
He said after taking back control of the company, he decided the sponsorship no longer made business sense, but he fully intended to make good on the debt.
He said he was told Mississauga city council approved a payment amount and payment terms.
“The council agreed on it. We agreed on it. The rest was legal verbiage and a couple conditions that they wanted to meet. And we kept following them and chasing them, from December until now.”
On Friday, city spokesperson Irene McCutcheon declined to comment on Fakih’s version of the events, because the city is planning to file a lawsuit against Paramount
“A statement of claim will be filed in the coming weeks which will include the details you’ve requested below,” McCutcheon said in an email.
In a previous statement, the city said it had been trying to get Paramount to pay the $1.6 million it owes for some time.
“The City will not negotiate in public,” McCutcheon said on Wednesday, adding that postdated cheques from Fakih “are not actual payments and insufficient to meet the full amount owed to the City today.”
On Friday, Fakih said both sides agreed to payment of about $1.3 million, and the cheques covered that amount. He said he hadn’t heard the $1.6 million figure until recently.
Fakih said he decided to post the video on Monday because he was told the naming rights would be terminated in a matter of days. The intent, he said, was to gently break the news in a “positive” manner, since having the name of a halal restaurant chain on the local arena had stood as an important symbol in Mississauga for eight years.
“What the city doesn’t understand is, the name Paramount Fine Foods Centre … was a (point of) pride for the Muslim community,” he said.
The next day, the city announced it had “unilaterally terminated the contract with Paramount Fine Foods for lack of payment” and would rename the stadium the Mississauga Sports and Entertainment Centre as of June 1.
“After months of discussions, it has become evident that a reasonable conclusion cannot be reached,” Parrish said in a Tuesday statement addressed to the residents of Mississauga. “It is unfortunate that the owner of Paramount has chosen to move these discussions into the public realm.”
Fakih said he didn’t understand what was offensive about his video.
“She went straight to public statements and legal threats and public confrontation,” he said. “Mayor Carolyn Parrish selfishly only thought about herself, and how she looked. She didn’t know that I was trying to make positive news, or a positive approach to something that hurts the community, that hurts me personally.” McCutcheon responded by saying “neither the City nor the Mayor have any further comment.”
In a public video on Wednesday, Fakih said he has text messages with Parrish that “tell a very different story than the one she claims.” On Friday, he’d declined to release them.
“If I have to, I will,” he said.
