Slicing Away Some of Suburbia

There are so many vacant stores in my area that the disappearance of another storefront pizza parlor shouldn't have had much of an impact on me. I'm a vegan who never even tasted the pizza at Bella Nonna (though my family liked their food well enough), and there are as many pizzerias within a few miles of my house as there are slices in a large pizza. Yet the recent failure of this local business has been bothering me a lot.

According to a neighboring business owner, the pizzeria's owner was forced to close by the landlord after falling behind in the rent. I have no clue if the proprietor of the shuttered pizzeria tried to negotiate with the landlord. In my real estate law practice, I've assisted some of my commercial clients in receiving rent reductions and talked other landlords into extending lease terms without any increases in payments. Such concessions helped some shopkeepers and service businesses stay open, even if their lines of credit were curtailed or cut off. However, there have been just as many landlords who flatly refused to renegotiate or offer any incentives to keep an occupant from seeking more favorable terms down the turnpike. The end result is that the landlords often only gain more empty stores.

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