Allen Matkins

From our firm's inception, a cornerstone of Allen Matkins' practice has been our involvement in shopping center projects. We represent clients in the acquisition, development, leasing, financing, management and disposition of a wide spectrum of retail and entertainment projects. Attorneys in our Shopping Center & Retail Practice Group represent a large number of national and local shopping center developers and owners, some of the industry's premier retail anchor tenants and chain retailers, and local and national asset management companies. Our attorneys have specialized knowledge of the unique issues associated with the development, redevelopment, leasing, construction, financing, management and sale of regional and super regional malls, power centers, entertainment and specialty centers, mixed-use centers (including theme projects, casino/hotel/retail projects and tourist attractions), community and neighborhood shopping centers, and stand-alone sites. Our retail clients have found that our understanding of the market-driven aspects of shopping center transactions and the substantial breadth of experience of the Shopping Center & Retail Practice Group in representing large numbers of retail tenants, retail developers/landlords and lenders enable us to complete their transactions in the most timely, cost-effective manner. Areas in which our Shopping Center & Retail Practice Group has an extraordinary level of expertise include the following:

Our extensive experience with every aspect of regional and super regional mall documentation, including department store agreements, operations agreements, shopping center reciprocal easement agreements, and financing and loan documents, make us a valuable member of our client's project team.

Our entertainment retail practice is largely dedicated to the development and leasing of shopping centers anchored by multi-plex theaters, specialty retail users and restaurants and other entertainment uses.

Attorneys in our Shopping Center & Retail Practice Group represent some of the most successful retailers in the United States, some of whom are the largest as well. These sophisticated retailers rely on our expertise and ability to negotiate high quality shopping center documents: leases, purchase and sale agreements, CC&Rs, reciprocal easement agreements, and development agreements, among others, often on a fast track basis in order to gain competitive advantage to new sites. New store openings are a major concentration of our work; however, we also devote much of our efforts towards assisting our retail clients in other aspects of their real estate programs, including dispositions of excess properties, expansions, remodels, landlord-tenant disputes and lease buyouts. For some of our larger retail anchor and destination tenants who are acquiring large land holdings for their own portfolios, we bring our tremendous development expertise in land use entitlement, public finance and construction law to create additional value to their real estate holdings.

For our mall landlord clients, we have repeatedly negotiated transactions against many of the major department store chains such as J.C. Penney, Sears, Nordstrom, Dillards, Macy's, May Company, Mervyn's and Broadway Federated. For power center and community center shopping center owners, we have handled numerous repeat transactions with retail giants including Lowe's, Inc., Home Expo and Target. Our practical experience in negotiating against these retailers, and the relationship we have developed with them as a result, gives us the ability to assist our clients in closing their lease transactions more quickly and efficiently. We have also represented large shopping center owners in connection with bankruptcies of major anchor tenants, and in restructuring the debts of such tenants in Chapter 11 cases, as well as replacement of non-performing tenants. As a result of our work, we have played an integral role in the transformation of several shopping centers into viable centers with synergistic anchors.