Commercial Leases – Identifying Your Asset(s)
After the acquisition of our medical software company, we opened 2self-serve yogurt stores along with a few business partners. The first was located in Pigeon Forge and the other in Athens, Tennessee. The Athens store was chosen because there was a good-sized family restaurant which served as an anchor. During our conversations with the landlord, he was aware that we picked this location because of the anchor restaurant. We executed a 3-year triple net lease and opened the end of January. After we signed, we learned that the restaurant was moving out effective March 1, only five weeks after we opened. They had been in the process of building their own building for some time. Even though the landlord was aware of this fact, they never said anything to us about it. The 1 st quarter went well, but as time went on we saw the sales decline. We attributed it to the stabilization period but in the 2 nd quarter, we realized things were not improving. We shut the doors to our...