In shopping centres, a tenant’s business depends on the other tenants, and two clause families address that dependence.
Co-tenancy. Opening co-tenancy conditions the tenant’s obligation to open on specified anchors or an occupancy threshold being met. Operating co-tenancy gives remedies if those conditions later fail — reduced or percentage-only rent, and after a period a right to terminate.
Drafting points. Identify named anchors and acceptable replacements by category and size; define occupancy by leased and open-for-business area, excluding temporary tenants; provide a cure period; and cap the duration of alternative rent before termination is available. Landlords resist because lenders scrutinise co-tenancy exposure.
Use exclusives. A promise that the landlord will not lease other space in the centre to a competitor. Definition is everything: the protected use should be described by product category and by a percentage-of-floor-area or percentage-of-sales threshold, so that incidental sales do not breach.
Carve-outs for existing tenants, their renewals and assignments, and for anchors and outparcels not controlled by the landlord.
Remedies for breach — injunctive relief, reduced rent, termination — should be specified, since damages are hard to prove.
Recording a memorandum of the exclusive puts future tenants on notice, which is what makes enforcement against them possible.