Office tenants may want to host private business receptions in their own space, even if your office building has common lounges, conference rooms, and other facilities suitable for those events. Such a demand may put the landlord in a tricky spot. Tenants need the freedom to use their office space for the activities they deem necessary to run their business. The problem is that these in-house events may interfere with the professional and dignified atmosphere that office building landlords work so hard to maintain.  

A New York City leasing attorney representing the landlord of a trophy property faced with this situation found an effective way to balance the competing interests: Allow the tenant to hold occasional receptions within its space, but agree to do so in a way that won’t interfere with the building’s “Class A ambience.” After much back and forth, the sides came up with an agreement on which our Model Lease Clause is based. While intended for tenant receptions inside office space, the eight parameters for tenant receptions listed in the clause also work for other situations in which a tenant’s use inside the space it leases may disturb or disrupt other tenants in the building, center, or facility. 

Parameter 1. Number of Events Per Year

Limit how many receptions a tenant may hold in the space over a given period. Our Model Lease Clause allows four events per 12-month period, but you may negotiate for a smaller or larger number depending on the situation, proposed event, and type of building involved.  

Parameter 2. Advance Notice Required Before Each Event

Make the tenant give you advance notice of each event so you know it’s happening and can take whatever preparations may be necessary. For example, the landlord may need to ask the tenant to require its guests to use a side entrance if the reception is to take place on a date in which cleaning, maintenance, or repair work is scheduled for the front entrance lobby [Clause, par. 1]. 

Parameter 3. Event Location

Private receptions may disturb other tenants if they spill out into hallways, lobbies, parking lots, and other building common areas. So, require tenants to keep their receptions entirely within their own leased space and to ban their guests from loitering in the common areas at any time before, during, and after the event [Clause, pars. 2 and 7]. 

Parameter 4. Event Hours & Duration 

Receptions are more likely to disrupt other tenants when they take place during prime business hours. So, get the tenant to agree to start the event no earlier than 5 p.m. and end it by a specific time, e.g., 9 p.m., well before midnight [Clause, par. 3].  

Parameter 5. Maximum Number of Occupants in Space During Event

Make tenants who want to host receptions guard against overcrowding that can threaten peace, quiet, and safety. Limiting the number of occupants that can be in the leased premises at any one time while the reception is occurring is less intrusive than telling tenants how many guests they can have [Clause, par. 4].   

Parameter 6. Serving of Alcohol During Events 

Serving of alcohol at tenant receptions increases the risks of rowdy behavior and opens a pandora’s box of liability concerns. The easiest way to guard against these risks is simply to ban the serving and consumption of alcohol during tenant receptions [Clause, par. 5, Option A].

If no alcohol is a deal breaker, negotiate for language that requires the tenant to: (i) Comply with liquor licensing and other state and local laws regulating the sale, serving, and consumption of alcohol; and (ii) carry appropriate liability insurance including protection against “dram shop” liability holding hosts legally responsible for negligent serving of alcohol to guests who get into drunk driving accidents or otherwise cause injury [Clause, par. 5, Option B].

Parameter 7. Guests’ Behavior During Events

Require the tenant to ensure that its guests don’t engage in any behavior that’s illegal, unsafe, disorderly, or that unreasonably interferes with the management of the building and its use and enjoyment by other tenants. Guests should also be required to comply with all security, parking, fire, sanitation, and other building protocols while on the premises [Clause, par. 6].

Parameter 8. Other Rules

Finally, get the tenant to agree to comply with any additional rules, regulations, directives, procedures, and/or protocols that you determine, in your sole discretion, to be necessary to foster and maintain a “first-class atmosphere” in the building, including but not limited to with regard to insurance, security, cleaning, and municipal licenses [Clause, par. 8].