Real Estate Retail

Our attorneys help many of the nation’s largest and best-known retailers, shopping centers, restaurants, REITs and industry groups negotiate leases, purchases, construction and other contracts for millions of square feet of retail, warehouse and distribution space each year. Our clients buy, sell, develop, redevelop, lease and occupy space from regional malls, mixed-use projects, power centers, neighborhood centers, and free-standing sites. With decades of experience on projects around the country, we understand the nuances that affect successful development projects, applying the lessons learned from years of service to the unique, specific demands of each client matter.

Seyfarth Shaw has extensive experience representing inbound international retailers as they introduce flagship stores in major urban locations and local outlets at shopping malls and other retail districts around the United States. Typical leasing transactions have ranged in size from 1,500 to 60,000+ square feet, and often total in the millions of square feet for a single company across dozens of states. These transactions have involved flagship stores in some of the prime urban shopping districts throughout North America, including locations on Fifth Avenue in New York City, North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and Powell Street in San Francisco. In assisting such international clients, we draw on the global knowledge of the firm’s retail practice and the in-depth concentrations of individual attorneys, whose international real estate experience includes areas of law, such as finance, lending, tax, construction and contracts, that are critical to the success of foreign investments in the United States.

On behalf of land owners, developers, lenders, tenants and municipalities, we routinely handle negotiations and deals involving permanent and construction financing; site design and layout; construction- and development-related agreements; specific uses; entity formation and joint venture work; development reimbursement, including tax increment financing (TIF), real estate tax assessment contests, sales tax rebates and other economic development incentives; guarantees involving costs and construction dates, the relocation of tenants during construction; and environmental concerns.

Representative Engagements

• We represented the nation’s largest home-improvement retailer (and second-largest developer) in over 70 transactions throughout the United States, involving the purchase and development of nearly 6 million square feet of retail and distribution space, with project costs in excess of $600 million.
• We represented a developer in a $20+ million retail development of a condemned municipal property, which included the negotiation of a sophisticated redevelopment agreement that detailed the integration of a multiple structure, 120,000-square-foot retail site with a bordering village complex containing a city hall, a library, and police and fire stations.
• Over a six-year period, our real estate attorneys and paralegals helped the commercial-lending program of a major international insurance company close over 170 commercial real estate loans nationwide with an aggregate principal amount in excess of $2.3 billion.