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While it can be a complicated process to “green a lease” for a tenant that requests environmentally friendly provisions, these agreements can work in your favor, too. Cost savings through energy efficiency, earning valuable credits toward LEED certification, and becoming attractive to green-centric prospective tenants are all major benefits.
Sadly, public violence has escalated in the past few years, with attacks in workplaces, entertainment venues, and malls. That’s why it’s important to give yourself the right to make a tenant buy new insurance or increase its coverage during the lease term to respond to changing circumstances.
Don’t rely on an “implied” continuous operations covenant—that is, one that isn’t expressly stated in the lease—if you want your retail tenant to continuously operate from its space. Some courts might find that one exists anyway in certain situations, such as when the lease requires a long-term tenant to pay a minimal base rent but substantial percentage rent, limits the tenant’s use and abilit...
Negotiating tenant parking requests is a key part of lease deals for most retail tenants. They’ll likely come to the table with requests, and your goal should be to work with the tenant to come up with parking provisions that help their businesses, without compromising your ability to run the center in the best interest of all tenants. Remember that a tenant could try to use the parking rights in its lease to block you from opera...
Q: A tenant at my shopping center claims that an ongoing plumbing condition in its space is interfering with its business. I’ve been trying to fix the situation, but the problem is extensive and has needed a series of repairs. Now, the tenant is threatening to move out, saying that it has been “constructively evicted.” However, it&rsquo...
Lease terms aren’t solely the deciding factor in who prevails when an owner and tenant disagree. The way in which one or both parties have behaved during the lease period can also be important—especially if the lease is ambiguous. In that case, a court may look to the “course of conduct” of both sides to determine how to proceed. So, when dealing with your tenant, make sure that you don’t do anything repea...
If you signed a lease with an operating cotenancy clause, you may feel that you’re under pressure to keep the status quo at your center or pay the price by allowing the tenant with a cotenancy right to pay reduced rent or take advantage of other concessions if one or more other tenants close or go dark during the lease term and aren’t replaced within a designated period of time. But you don’t have to give a tenant unf...
It’s important to reevaluate your tenant restrictions after a post-disaster shakeup. Recent natural disasters and extreme weather have forced some tenants out of business or have forced them to relocate after their space has been damaged. And many shopping centers have felt the effects of a tenant shakeup. Aside from dealing with the financial aftermath, you should also take a good look at the new makeup of your center.
Q: I lease property to a wide variety of tenants, and I have leases that are technical and complicated. If a term or terms in one of these leases turned out to be illegal, what effect would it have on the rest of the agreement?