Conditions requiring specific occupancy levels before the tenant is obligated to open.
By Angel Campa, Founder · Updated March 2026
Opening co-tenancy protects a tenant from opening in a shopping center that lacks the foot traffic needed to support the business. If the anchor tenant has not opened or the center is less than 60% occupied, the co-tenancy clause may allow the tenant to delay opening, pay reduced rent, or terminate. Without this protection, a tenant could be forced to open in a half-empty center, spending tens of thousands on staffing and inventory with minimal customer traffic.
Found in the "Co-tenancy" section, typically in retail lease addenda. Look for conditions tied to named anchor tenants, minimum occupancy percentages, and the remedies available if conditions are not met at the scheduled opening date.
Lextract uses a combination of AWS Textract OCR and Claude AI to identify and extract the opening co-tenancy from your lease PDF. The AI searches for all pages of the document, then assigns a confidence score based on OCR quality and extraction certainty. Fields with lower confidence are flagged for human review.
Exclusive Use
A covenant preventing the landlord from leasing to direct competitors in the center.
Radius Restriction
The geographic distance within which a tenant cannot open a competing location.
Ongoing Co-tenancy
Conditions requiring the continuous operation of specific anchor tenants.
Co-tenancy Remedy
The tenant's recourse if co-tenancy fails.
Alternative Rent
The modified rent structure implemented during a co-tenancy failure period.
Common requirements include: (1) a named anchor tenant being open and operating, (2) a minimum occupancy threshold (typically 60-75% of the center's GLA), or (3) both. Some clauses name specific co-tenants (e.g., "Target and at least two major national retailers must be open").
Typical remedies include: the right to delay opening until conditions are met, paying percentage rent only (or a reduced alternative rent) until conditions are satisfied, or the right to terminate the lease if conditions are not met within a specified period (often 12-18 months).
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