An upscale Miami-area shopping mall is moving to evict Saks Fifth Avenue, saying the retailer hasn’t paid rent since March 16 and owes about $1.9 million, Bloomberg News reported. Saks told its landlord, Bal Harbour Shops LLC, this month that it couldn’t make lease payments on its three-level retail store due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a lawsuit filed in state court. But the mall owner said that Saks is currently open and was still generating revenue even when non-essential businesses were closed to in-store customers. Bal Harbour said that the store generated more revenue in June 2020 than it did in the same month the previous year. Saks Fifth Avenue, owned by Canadian parent Hudson’s Bay Co., is among a broad group of businesses that have been hurt by economic lockdowns and a rapid change of consumer tendencies amid the global pandemic. In a statement, Saks Fifth Avenue said that the owners of Bal Harbour “have not acted in good faith,” unlike “the majority of our landlord partners.” Read more.
Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available at the ABI Store.
