Field Notes

The opening date came first. It was chosen to line up with a major event in the city in June. It was a good reason to want a date. It had nothing to do with what it would take to build the store. That distinction sounds small. On a 15,000-square-foot flagship, it decided almost everything […]

The most valuable paragraph I ever negotiated into a lease had nothing to do with rent. It sat in Schedule C, in a document long enough that most people skim it. It said the landlord would deliver the space stripped. Not a vanilla shell, with the previous tenant’s walls and ceilings tidied up and left […]