After more than 20 years of online shopping, 'in store' purchases still account for approximately 90% of all retail sales. This indicates the extraordinary resiliency of brick and mortar retail stores and shopping centers in the face of an explosion of technology which continually improves the convenience of online ordering. As the online shopping industry has grown ever more technology advanced, the brick and mortar retail segment has not stood still. Today's retail consumer is served by a greater number of retail formats from giant 'power' shopping centers anchored by gargantuan stores like Walmart and Costco, to lifestyle shopping centers which emphasize entertainment, to large drug stores that seem almost like supermarkets, to 'Category Killers' that provide a great depth of merchandise within a single category to chain stores and smaller niche boutiques providing merchandise to the public that almost no one could have ever anticipated. Navigating the world of retail and shopping center transactions can be an imposing task for the novice. Store Leases and especially Shopping Center leases contain clauses that are not found in almost any other type of agreement. The use of a particular premises can be highly restricted through a 'use' clause or 'radius' clause. A premises can restrict other premises in the surrounding area through an 'exclusive' clause or 'reverse radius' clause. A landlord frequently takes a small portion of its tenant's gross revenue over a negotiated breakpoint through a 'percentage rent' clause. To know this industry one must know the retail categories, the major industry participants and the clauses that traditionally compose a retail lease. The Halper Firm has decades of experience in this field including the negotiation of leases for a wide variety of retail categories while representing both landlords and tenants, and also supporting the needs of leading litigation firms in significant cases in the industry either in a role as expert witness or litigation consultant. |