Scott Kadish

Subscribe to Scott Kadish's Posts

Chairing the firm’s Leasing and Retail Groups, Scott maintains the skills and expertise needed to represent landlords and tenants in the development and lease-up of shopping centers on a national basis. He also counsels clients on a wide variety of real estate and business transactions, and general business law. Scott brings his leadership to the firm’s Cincinnati office where he serves as partner-in-charge, overseeing its operations, business development and client relationships. Repeatedly named to Ohio Super Lawyers, and having achieved the highest ranking, AV Preeminent®, from Martindale-Hubbell®, Scott also serves as a member of the firm’s Management Committee.

Contact:Read more about Scott Kadish

I attended the recent ICSC Regional Law Conference in Columbus, Ohio. It was a great conference where I reconnected with many great colleagues – including my son Kendall who is only in his second year practicing law, but recently took advantage of his Dad in a lease negotiation where he represented an escape room tenant and his Dad represented the landlord.

Richard Tranter’s presentation on the need for retail to be experiential was great. But Kendall explained it best when he said “a successful retail experience is one where people want to post an Instagram picture about the experience.” I am definitely stealing that.

The best presentation was actually about cannabis, which is a fast-growing retail industry with very interesting legal issues. As you can imagine, attendance for this presentation was high. (ha!)
Continue Reading Fix Your Lease Even if You Can’t Fix the Weather

I just attended the BDO Restaurant CFO Roundtable where I presented the Top 10 Most Important Legal Provisions of a Restaurant Lease. Arranged by Dustin Minton and Floyd Roades of BDO, the Roundtable brings together restaurant industry executives to learn about industry trends. BDO is the industry leader when it comes to accounting services for restaurants. I was very impressed with every BDO person I met and I loved their new office. Wide open spaces designed to encourage collaboration. The best space was the employee dining room which had a ping pong table in it and an attached balcony overlooking Great American Ballpark.

I won’t recreate the whole presentation here, but I will say that the top most important lease provision (according to me) is the construction exhibit/clause. Between chargebacks, bonding requirements, security deposits, impact fees, requirements to work before permits are received, equipment requirements and design requirements, a tenant’s construction budget and opening schedule could be significantly affected. And these things are never covered in the LOI and typically are not even presented until the end of the lease process.
Continue Reading Life is Like a Restaurant

“Street Food” has generally referred to prepared food items ready for immediate consumption sold on the street or in a public space from a food cart, food truck or similar moveable station. The connotation was cheaper fast food.

Today, “street food” is a unique, trendy selling point. There is Piada Italian Street Food that brands…

World Famous Las Vegas Nevada. Vegas Strip Entrance Sign in 80s Vintage Color Grading. United States of America.

I just returned from the National Restaurant Association Financial Officers and Tax Executives Conference in Las Vegas. I participated on a Real Estate Leasing Trends panel with Adam Schwegman, head of the eat/drink department of General Growth Properties and George Galloway of Next Realty Mid-Atlantic, with Ryan Cupersmith of Ernst & Young as our moderator. While there, I was able to soak in some knowledge myself. Here are some of the highlights of what I learned:

  1. Restaurants may be the new anchor in retail developments. A center has to provide an “experience” to motivate consumers to shop at the center as opposed to sitting home and buying over the internet. Restaurants have become a great way to create an experience and draw customers in.
  1. Restaurants are immune to internet competition. Last time I checked, you can’t buy a prepared meal over the internet that comes with a server and clean-up crew, so restaurants appear to be safe from internet competition, at least for now.

Continue Reading ‘Lease’ Vegas

I have previously commented about the similarity in service between a restaurant and law firm (see prior blog). One area where restaurants differ from other businesses is the issues presented in a retail lease.

For Lease Sign in window

A restaurant lease involves unique issues which must/should be dealt with, some more monetarily significant than others. But don’t underestimate the annoyance factor. If any of these issues are not dealt with appropriately, you can bet someone will be more than a little annoyed.

  1. Impact Fees – Because restaurants are typically big water consumers, new build locations may charge a significant tap-in fee. In some cases, there may be various impact fees. Depending on leverage, a restaurant may be able to get the landlord to pay this as part of its development costs. But even if the landlord will not pay the fee, the restaurant needs to know the exact amount of the fee so that it can correctly prepare its budget.
  1. Trash Removal – There are many different ways a landlord can charge for trash removal. Does the restaurant have its own dedicated dumpster? Does the landlord mark up the bill? Is there a choice on who to use as the hauler? I have heard of landlords going to a weight-based system where a tenant gets billed for actual disposal, but have not actually seen one in place. In any event, these details need to be determined before the lease is signed.

Continue Reading A Restaurant Lease is a Unique Dish

Scott KadishI am a commercial leasing attorney at a large firm. I have developed a decent stable of loyal clients, but not because I am the smartest attorney in the world. I like to think I’m smart, but I would be less than honest if I said that my success is due to being the smartest guy in the room. No, I believe my success is attributable to my client service. I know I have done my job when a client asks if they are my only client. So what is good service? It is not merely returning phone calls or emails. It is going above and beyond expectations. And who is the client? It should not just be the ultimate consumer, but everyone you work with and for. So it is not just the CEO of the company for whom you are providing services, it is the secretary or administrative assistant at the company, it is every other employee at that company with whom you may interact, and it is your superiors at your own company.

I waited tables to help pay for college. As a waiter, my income was 100% dependent on providing good service. And that meant not just bringing the meal, but like an attorney going above and beyond expectations. In many ways, everything I really need to know about client service I learned from being a waiter.
Continue Reading All I Really Need to Know About Client Service I Learned in a Restaurant

I’ve been thinking a lot about that word lately. Change. I get it that change is constant and to be successful you need to embrace change. That doesn’t mean we should just accept changes that are bad. No, I think it means that we need to accept that change is inevitable and be ready to…

Allen Klein said that humor cannot change a situation, but it can change your attitude about it.

I am working on a lease where I represent a restaurant tenant against a well-known, national REIT landlord. Needless to say, the landlord’s form lease is crazy-long and overly one sided, and the landlord is not very flexible.…

It seems like lease issues come in cycles: seemingly out of nowhere, a particular issue that may have never been a concern on previous leases arises suddenly only to disappear once again. Is the rise to prominence of a certain issue indicative of something larger at play? Here are the issues I seem to be…

a1615c2959974979a3519ef9a64b3e2b
I just attended the Midwest Real Estate News Magazine Cincinnati Commercial Real Estate Summit. I heard a very interesting discussion about the Cincinnati real estate market, addressing retail, office, industrial, healthcare and investment properties.

Norm Khoury of Colliers International was the moderator.

John Thompson of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank discussed retail issues. John commented that…