Shopping center landlords want to preserve flexibility and their tenants want to protect what they “bought” when signing their leases. Ruminations believes both positions deserve respect.

If a tenant wants to be the master of its own destiny it shouldn’t be a tenant where others live. It should either buy its own homestead or do the equivalent of a sale-leaseback where it can generally write its own lease. If, on the other hand, a tenant wants the benefit of a “community” it has to yield some autonomy. Someone has to manage the community, and that manager inevitably is a “landlord.”

On the other hand (“he wore a glove,” but that’s the punchline to a clean joke not worth telling today) landlords demanding total management control need to be benevolent dictators, and in the long run, there are no such persons. Sometimes, a benevolent dictator needs to subordinate her or his own interests to those of his or her “subjects.” [Read more…]