REDEVELOPMENT OF EXISTING SITES AND BUILDINGS MARK ELLIOT & DAVID KIRK
were once a part of other tracts, you change legal descriptions for particular buildings, in violation of the lease; you could be putting buildings in the middle of easements that were created under the original development scheme, that are easily movable from a physical standpoint, if you can move them, from a legal standpoint. What those violations mean to the owners of the newly formed tracts can vary; the violations can be inconsequential and easily addressed, or they can create rights in a tenant or other office building owner that could impair a new development from going forward.
The final issue to address in this regard is how these densification efforts, and especially office park densification, impacts or is limited by an office park’ s recorded covenants, which typically take the form of covenants, conditions and restrictions, or declarations of covenants and easements. Those recorded documents have legal requirements which must be complied with, and often those requirements are enforced( or can be waived) by a board elected by the owners of the property in the area encumbered by the declaration. Where the owner undertaking an office park densification no longer owns a majority of land or improvements, there is a risk that, because of competing interests or indifference, that owner cannot get the proposed office park densification approved by the governing body.
While owners may find it attractive to mine value from their real estate assets by creating additional density on those assets, those owners must be aware of the challenges that may come with those actions, over and above ordinary construction and development issues. Those issues arise from the already existing documents that create value in the real estate asset: the leases; covenants; and easements.