Way back when in high school, I was on stage crew for the school’s productions. What I realized was that after doing that for several years, whenever I went to a Broadway show or musical, I would be at least as interested in how the crew handled the sets and lighting and sound as I… Continue reading Looking behind the retail curtain at the holiday
Site plan of King of Prussia Plaza from the early 1960s with an Acme Supermarket: Since the 1970s, it has not been common to see certain types of tenants in regional malls as department stores enforced certain types of use restrictions that existed in their leases (often to protect parking). However, as closures of former… Continue reading Gross sales/percentage rent considerations when backfilling a department store/big box
This weekend, I was in South Bend and Chicago. On the way back to O’Hare, my wife and I had some free time, so we stopped at Macerich’s Fashion Outlets of Chicago. Besides having a beautiful, well thought out tenant mix, they have an outstanding parking garage. An outstanding garage, you say? Absolutely. I am… Continue reading Red light, green light, 1, 2, 3 …
In any given year, we (my company, Meridian Realty Consultants) will read and abstract 8-10,000 leases. We get to see what landlords and tenants spend their time negotiating. It is not uncommon for someone in the office to say, “Can you believe someone took the time to negotiate this?” It might be something as simple… Continue reading Negotiate your leases wisely!
This past week, Sears announced another 42 closures. As usual, we see even retail real estate executives posting or re-posting about the “Dying Retail Sector.” But, what I see regularly, not from these fatalists, is successful real estate companies take a different approach – “How do we take advantage of these opportunities?” One particular client… Continue reading Retail – the fatalists and the opportunists
This week, we were working on a mall in the Rocky Mountain States. One of the food court tenants had a precipitous drop in sales – from north of $2m to under $1m from 2014 to 2016. I looked at the monthly sales, and sales had been running about $200k per month almost regardless of… Continue reading The value of radius restrictions
In the majority of retail leases (and in a smaller portion of office leases), we have sections in the leases that address how to calculate the tenant’s prorata share of real estate taxes as well as tenant’s share of property insurance. This can be a little confusing if you do not read leases regularly because… Continue reading Common area taxes and liability insurance
Experiential retail. Bricks and mortar stores as distribution points. Online sales returns. Showrooming. We are continuously bombarded with articles about the death of retail, the evolution of retail, stores closures, the death of retail being exaggerated, announced stores closings, announced store openings. While there seems to be little agreement about the future of retail, there… Continue reading Retail evolution and the need for lease language changes
This particular blog in not the Sunday blog addressing lease administration issues. It is an opinion piece. I’ll be back to the regular blog on Sunday. If you’ve clicked, you probably know the Monty Python reference. If you don’t know it, I’ll try to explain dry (but incredibly funny) British humor. The Dead Collector is… Continue reading Shopping Centers – “Bring out your dead!” “I’m not dead!”
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