Your search for a lawyer with extensive legal practice ends with Winer & Winer in Bethesda, MD. We offer advice, counsel, aid in negotiation, and document production in the areas of general business law for small- to medium-sized businesses. Our specific areas of practice include:
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Landlord, hoping to redevelop a moribund shopping center into a mixed-use residential/retail project, sought to turn the shopping center site into a construction zone and build around the few remaining retail Tenants which had already suffered in the shopping center for years while the Landlord cleared out the shopping center of neighboring Tenants in anticipation of redevelopment. We researched the matter and posed the theory that the Landlord could not change the nature of the development from a retail shopping center site into a primarily residential site based on an implied "restrictive covenant" in the remaining Tenants' leases, coupled with the fact that there were retail-oriented use clauses in most of the other leases in place in the shopping center. On behalf of our client, we first sought to negotiate with the Landlord (as a matter of firm policy, in almost all circumstances, we first try to negotiate solutions to clients' legal problems), seeking a rent reduction during the construction process and also lease term extension for the timeframe after delivery of the new mixed-use project. When the Landlord refused to even negotiate, we filed a declaratory judgment action in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County seeking an injunction restricting the Landlord from changing of the nature of the shopping center on the basis that our client' s lease served as a restrictive covenant on the Landlord's use of its own the site. Our client had suffered enough without neighbors; an extended construction period, followed by life without a retail anchor tenant to attract shoppers, would have likely bankrupted our client. Based on the strength of the restrictive covenant claim we put forward, and in the face of a Court order which would have prevented Landlord from going forward with its mixed-use plans, we resolved the matter on behalf of our client without the matter even having to go to Court by accepting the Landlord's offer to accommodate the tenant during the construction period and providing the tenant with an attractive long-term lease following the delivery of the new mixed-use development.
We advised and assisted a retail food client on converting its concept into a franchising model, going from a handful of shopping center kiosk locations to a multiple-unit national operator and a registered franchisor of it retail food concept. We helped the client purchase its initial four (4) units out of bankruptcy, on favorable terms, and then negotiated leases in super-regional and regional shopping malls, mostly along the East coast, to the point of establishing approximately thirty (30) shopping mall locations. We then handled the franchise registration process under various state franchising laws and statutes in order to qualify the client to market and sell its concept and system on a franchise basis. We then assisted in the sale of both franchises and in some cases the assets of particular locations it had already established. In addition to this franchise situation, which was a matter of being involved from start to finish, we also handle franchise matters for both existing franchisors as well as franchisees.
A retail jewelry client in a major retail shopping center was coming up on its 10th year anniversary and the expiration of its lease term, without any renewal option. When the shopping center ownership changed hands and the new Landlord adopted a different tenant-mix strategy, the new Landlord refused to offer an attractive lease renewal despite the fact that this tenant had been one of the original Tenants at that particular shopping center and had been loyal during difficult times at the shopping center for nearly 10 years. The new institutional Landlord had a preference for national retailers and a bias against local home-grown retailers even though this particular retailer operated three (3) locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and was well-known locally. When negotiations with the new institutional Landlord slowed, sensing their preference for national names but while continuing negotiations, on behalf of our jeweler client, we approached the adjacent regional shopping center about their potential interest in bringing this local retailer to their center. They were delighted. We thus commenced simultaneous negotiations with the adjacent regional shopping center and had two (2) fully negotiated deals in the end, with our choice of locations. In the end, our dual-track strategy leads to a much more attractive deal at the adjacent regional shopping center, with a more suitable tenant-mix and customer base, a new 10-year lease, immediately adjacent to the country's second LL Bean superstore.
