Anchor Tenant Economics & Co-Tenancy Clauses: The Cascade That Decides Inline Rent

Key Takeaways

Why the Anchor Decides Everything

A shopping center is not a collection of independent rent streams. It is a single integrated cash flow whose component leases are economically dependent on one another. The anchor tenant — the grocery store, the department store, the off-price big-box — sits at the head of that dependency chain. Every other rent in the center is, in practice, a derivative position on the anchor's foot traffic. The institutional underwriter who treats the anchor lease as just another tenant line on the rent roll is mispricing the asset.

This is what the SERP gets wrong about anchor tenants. The top-ranking pages define the term (a tenant that occupies the most space; a tenant that draws traffic; a tenant on a long-term lease) and then move on. The institutional reading is structural: the anchor tenant is the lowest-rent box in the center and the single largest determinant of every other rent in the center, because the anchor's foot traffic is the externality that lets the landlord charge inline tenants a 3–5x rent premium per square foot. Co-tenancy clauses are the contractual machinery that exposes this dependency — they let inline tenants step out of their rent obligation when the foot-traffic externality fails. Underwriting an anchored center without modeling the cascade is underwriting only the gross potential rent. The realized rent is what the cascade allows.

This article walks the unified mechanism. We start with the institutional taxonomy of anchor types (anchor, junior anchor, shop, pad — each with different rent PSF, term, and credit profiles). We then open the below-market anchor rent mechanism: why anchors pay 30–60% of inline rents, how that subsidy is economically rational for both sides, and how it gets priced into pro formas. We turn to co- tenancy clauses: the trigger taxonomy (occupancy threshold, named-anchor, opening vs continuing), the remedies cascade (rent abatement, percentage-rent conversion, termination), and the cure-period optionality that landlords use to dilute the worst case. We close with a worked anchor-loss cascade — a $125M grocery-anchored center where the anchor vacates with three years remaining and what that does to the cap rate — and a modeling walkthrough for the suite-level co-tenancy logic that AQ-301 implements.

What Is an Anchor Tenant? The Institutional Taxonomy

The retail-investor SERP defines "anchor tenant" by a single dimension: square footage. The institutional taxonomy uses four: GLA, rent PSF, lease term, and credit. Cross those four dimensions and the shopping- center rent roll resolves into four distinct positions — anchor, junior anchor, shop, pad — each priced and underwritten on its own logic.

An anchor occupies 20,000–80,000+ SF, pays $8–15/SF on a 20–30 year primary lease, typically carries investment-grade or near-IG corporate credit (Whole Foods owned by Amazon; Publix as a private S&P A-rated grocer; Kroger as an S&P BBB-rated public; Target and Walmart as A-rated publics; TJX as A+), and signs minimal percentage-rent clauses because the rent is already so far below market. The anchor's job inside the rent roll is to deliver foot traffic and signed-lease term certainty. The anchor's job inside the capital stack is to underwrite the lender's debt service coverage on a single tenant that won't go away.

A junior anchor occupies 10,000–25,000 SF, pays $12–22/SF on a 10–15 year primary lease, and represents the most institutionally active backfill cohort. The 2020–2026 wave of big-box rationalization moved discount and off-price retailers into junior-anchor positions: Ross Dress for Less, TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, Marshalls (TJX family), Burlington, Five Below, Ulta, Petco, ALDI, and Sprouts. These tenants pay between anchor and inline rents because they capture some of the foot-traffic externality but also generate their own. They sign shorter primary terms than anchors but with stronger renewal expectations — institutional underwriters typically model TJX-family renewals at 90%+ probability based on the chain's published 18–25x rent-coverage ratios.

A shop or inline tenant occupies 1,200–5,000 SF, pays $25–45/SF on a 5–10 year primary lease, and is the rent line that carries the foot-traffic premium. Inline tenants are local and regional operators (nail salons, dry cleaners, sandwich shops, mobile- phone resellers), national soft-line specialty (Bath & Body Works, Claire's, Foot Locker), and service- medical (urgent care, dental, optical). The shop tenant's rent is the underwriting wedge: it's the rent that can move up if center traffic improves and the rent that disappears first if center traffic collapses.

A pad or outparcel sits in front of the center on a separately platted lot, typically on a ground lease, and operates economically as a standalone STNL asset rather than as part of the center cash flow. QSR ground leases (McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks) trade at 4.40–6.45% cap rates per Boulder Group Q1 2026 — entirely separate pricing from the inline center behind them. The pad's rent doesn't reach the anchor cascade and the cascade doesn't reach the pad's rent. We treat pad economics in detail in the companion piece on pad-site underwriting.

The Below-Market Anchor Rent Mechanism

The most underdiscussed institutional fact in retail underwriting is that anchor tenants pay 30–60% of what the inline shops behind them pay, per square foot. A Whole Foods at $13/SF sits in front of inline shops paying $32/SF. A TJ Maxx at $14/SF sits in front of inline shops paying $30/SF. A Target at $9/SF sits in front of pads at $80,000/year ground rent. The discount isn't a courtesy. It's a contractual transaction: the anchor delivers measurable foot traffic (Whole Foods runs roughly 6,000–9,000 weekly visitors at a typical store; Publix runs 8,000–12,000; Walmart runs 18,000–30,000) and the landlord prices the inline rent to capture the externality value the anchor generates.

The arithmetic of the trade is unambiguous. Consider a 120,000 SF grocery-anchored center with one 45,000 SF anchor at $12/SF (paying $540K/year) and 75,000 SF of inline at $32/SF (paying $2.4M/year), for a gross potential rent of $2.94M. If the anchor paid market rent — call it $30/SF in the same submarket — the anchor rent would be $1.35M and the gross potential rent would jump to $3.75M. But without the anchor's foot traffic, the inline shops can't sustain $32/SF; comparable un-anchored strip retail in the same submarket clears at $18–22/SF. The "no-anchor" gross potential is closer to $1.35M + 75,000 × $20 = $2.85M — barely different from the actual gross. The anchor's below-market rent is not lost revenue; it's the cost of generating the inline premium.

From the anchor's side, the discount is equally rational. A typical Kroger store generates $35–55M in annual sales; rent at $12/SF on 50,000 SF is $600K, or roughly 1.2–1.7% of sales. A TJX-family big-box generates $14–20M in annual sales; rent at $14/SF on 25,000 SF is $350K, or 1.8–2.5% of sales. Inline tenants pay 6–12% of sales as rent. The anchor is willing to commit 20–30 years of operating term and corporate guarantee at low PSF because the rent-to-sales ratio fits the chain's long-run operating economics. Push the rent to $25–30/SF and the same chain either won't sign or will demand a percentage-rent kickout that erodes the landlord's cash-flow certainty. The below-market PSF is the price of long-dated investment-grade signed term.

Anchor and inline rent PSF compared with sales PSF and occupancy cost ratio. Anchors run 1–5% occupancy cost; inlines run 6–10%. The rent gap is the foot-traffic premium the landlord extracts from inline tenants because the anchor's traffic underwrites it.

The TJX-Ross-Burlington row deserves a separate institutional read. These chains operate at 18–25x rent-coverage ratios (annual sales divided by annual rent) and have been the dominant institutional-grade backfill cohort since the 2020–2024 wave of big-box closures (Bed Bath & Beyond, BBBY 2023; Tuesday Morning, 2023; Christmas Tree Shops, 2023; Big Lots, 2024). When a Bed Bath & Beyond went dark in a Brixmor or Phillips Edison or Regency-anchored center, the institutional landlord's first call was to TJX, Ross, Burlington, or Five Below — not to a single-tenant repositioning play, and not to a non-credit local backfill. The discount/off-price cohort has driven roughly 70% of post-2022 institutional big-box backfills by published REIT disclosure. That fact is what makes the 2026 anchor cascade survivable in most institutional portfolios — there's a deep, well-capitalized, IG-or-near-IG backfill bench.

Co-Tenancy Clauses: Triggers, Remedies, Cure

A co-tenancy clause is the contractual mechanism by which an inline tenant prices its lease as a derivative on anchor occupancy. The clause says: if defined anchor or occupancy conditions fail, the inline tenant gets defined relief. Get the trigger and the remedy right and the institutional inline lease is a sophisticated financial instrument; get them wrong and the landlord has either underpriced the inline rent or oversold the protection.

Institutional co-tenancy clauses split into two operating modes that practitioners often conflate. The first is the opening co-tenancy clause, which conditions the inline tenant's obligation to open and pay rent on the landlord delivering the center at a defined opening occupancy threshold (typically "the named anchor open and operating, plus 70–80% of the balance of GLA leased to operating tenants"). Opening co-tenancy applies to ground-up development and major redevelopments — the tenant is unwilling to open into an under-leased center because the foot traffic isn't yet underwritten. If the landlord misses the threshold by a defined cure period, the inline tenant has rent abatement or termination rights. This is the clause that bites in 2021–2026 lease-up scenarios for ground-up centers; less relevant to stabilized acquisitions.

The second is the ongoing or continuing co-tenancy clause, which is the institutional default for stabilized centers. It conditions the inline tenant's continued rent obligation on the named anchor remaining open and the center maintaining defined occupancy. If either fails for the defined trigger period (typically 6–12 months), inline remedies kick in. The continuing clause is what underwriters stress-test in every acquisition because it's the clause that converts an anchor exit into an immediate rent-roll problem.

The trigger taxonomy has three institutional variants:

• Occupancy co-tenancy — center occupancy falls below a defined threshold (typically 70–80%) and remains there for 6–12 months. The threshold is calibrated so that losing the anchor alone does not necessarily trigger it (a 30,000 SF anchor exit in a 120,000 SF center cuts occupancy by 25 points to roughly 75%, right at the trigger line). Losing the anchor plus 1–2 junior anchors or shops typically does.

• Named-anchor co-tenancy — one or more specifically named anchors must remain open and operating. National inline tenants negotiate this aggressively because it's binary: the anchor either is or isn't open. Junior anchors (TJX, Ross, Burlington) increasingly negotiate named-anchor co-tenancy that lists the primary anchor by name — Whole Foods, Publix, the specific chain.

• Use-based co-tenancy — the anchor space must operate under a defined use category (e.g., "first-quality grocery store of at least 40,000 SF") even if the named anchor exits. Rare in lease forms, common as a fallback in negotiated settlements when the landlord backfills with a non-grocery use.

The remedies cascade has three institutional layers and one rarely-used fourth:

• Tier 1 — partial rent abatement. The inline tenant pays a defined reduced rent (typically 50% of base, or "alternative rent" at $1/SF/year in some forms) during the trigger period. Anti-acceleration: the tenant cannot recover unpaid rent later; the abatement is permanent for the trigger period.

• Tier 2 — percentage-rent-only. The inline tenant pays a percentage of gross sales rather than base rent during the trigger period. National tenants with strong sales reporting prefer this structure because their reduced rent floats with their actual sales decline; landlords prefer it over flat 50% abatement because it captures upside if the tenant's sales hold up.

• Tier 3 — termination right. After the trigger period plus a defined cure period (often 12–24 months of continued co-tenancy failure), the inline tenant can terminate the lease with defined notice (typically 60–90 days). Termination is the institutional landlord's worst case — the tenant walks and the GLA goes dark, compounding the occupancy decline.

• Tier 4 — tenant improvement reimbursement. Rare. Found in negotiations with national tenants on long-dated leases where the tenant invested significant capital in build-out; the landlord agrees to reimburse the unamortized TI if the tenant exercises the termination right.

The landlord cure-period optionality is where the institutional value gets created or destroyed. Standard co-tenancy clauses give the landlord a defined window (180 days, 270 days, or 365 days, with 365 the institutional norm post-2020) to backfill the named anchor or restore occupancy before the inline remedies actually trigger. The cure period typically pauses if the landlord has a signed LOI or lease with a comparable replacement tenant in progress. Three institutional levers inside the cure-period drafting are worth 50–150 bps of cap-rate value in stress scenarios:

1. The "comparable replacement" definition. Narrow definitions ("a first-quality grocery store of at least 40,000 SF operating under a nationally recognized banner") protect the inline tenant but make the landlord's cure expensive. Broad definitions ("any retail use of at least 30,000 SF operating with comparable hours and traffic profile, including off-price, fitness, medical, and non-grocery retail uses") give the landlord cure-period optionality — the TJX/Ross/Burlington backfill bench, the LA Fitness/Crunch fitness backfills, the medical/urgent-care repositioning all depend on the broader definition.

2. The cure-period clock. 365-day cures dominate institutional lease forms post-2020; landlords successfully extended from 180-day norms during the 2020–2022 retail disruption when the WealthManagement-cited JLL data showed landlords offering rent concessions in exchange for co-tenancy waivers. The longer cure period is worth real economic value because it covers a typical leasing cycle (LOI, lease negotiation, build-out, opening) without triggering inline remedies.

3. The "fish or cut bait" provision. The landlord-side counter-protection: after 12 months of continued rent abatement, the inline tenant must either terminate the lease or resume full rent. The Malakai Sparks framing — "fish or cut bait" — prevents indefinite half-rent occupancy that erodes the landlord's NOI and the inline tenant's leverage to renegotiate. Without this provision, sophisticated inline tenants will sit on the abatement permanently if the cure period expires.

The Anchor-Loss Cascade: A Worked $125M Example

Concrete arithmetic. A 145,000 SF grocery-anchored center in a Sun Belt MSA carries the following rent roll: a 50,000 SF Kroger anchor at $11/SF ($550K/year, 7 years remaining on a 25-year primary, no extension exercised yet); a 25,000 SF TJ Maxx junior anchor at $15/SF ($375K/year, 9 years remaining); two junior boxes totaling 20,000 SF at $18/SF ($360K/year, blended 8 years remaining); and 50,000 SF of inline shops at $32/SF ($1.6M/year, blended 4 years remaining), all carrying continuing co-tenancy clauses. Gross potential rent: $2.885M. Operating expenses 30% of EGI net of reimbursements; NOI roughly $2.5M after vacancy/credit and admin. At a 6.50% cap rate, value is roughly $38M. (We illustrate cascade math on this smaller asset; a Brixmor or Regency portfolio center scales the same arithmetic by 3–4x.)

Now the cascade. With three years remaining on the anchor's primary term, Kroger announces a portfolio rationalization and lists this store in the closures cohort. The anchor's lease obligation continues (Kroger keeps paying $550K/year until lease expiration regardless of whether it operates) — this is the "go-dark" scenario, where the rent stays in but the foot traffic doesn't. The co-tenancy clauses on inline space and junior anchor space typically trigger on "open and operating," not just rent-paying. They fire.

The institutional underwriter walks the cascade in five steps:

1. Step 1: Identify the triggered GLA. Inline shops with continuing co-tenancy on the named Kroger trigger: 50,000 SF, $1.6M of base rent. TJ Maxx may carry its own named-anchor co-tenancy (institutional juniors increasingly do): 25,000 SF, $375K of base rent. The two smaller junior boxes likely also carry co-tenancy: 20,000 SF, $360K of base rent. Total triggered: 95,000 SF (65% of total GLA), $2.335M of base rent (81% of GPR).

2. Step 2: Apply the Tier 1 remedy. Reduce rent to 50% of base on all triggered GLA during the 365-day cure period. Triggered rent collected: $1.168M (vs $2.335M baseline). Untriggered rent (Kroger continues paying its $550K through lease end): $550K. Total rent during cure period: $1.718M, a $1.167M rent reduction. NOI falls from $2.5M to roughly $1.33M (rough estimate: opex stays flat at $1.05M; reimbursements drop proportionally).

3. Step 3: Apply the cap-rate widening. A center with a triggered co-tenancy cascade prices at a wider cap rate than the same center stabilized. Institutional comp evidence on anchor-loss cascade transactions typically shows 75–125 bps of widening, depending on backfill visibility. Apply 100 bps: cap rate moves from 6.50% to 7.50%. Value at the new NOI: $1.33M / 0.075 = $17.7M.

4. Step 4: Compute the value impact. Pre-cascade value: $38M. Post-cascade value: $17.7M. Impact: −$20.3M, or −53%. The NOI dropped 47% (Step 2), but the value dropped 53% because the cap rate also widened. This is the cascade's non-linearity.

5. Step 5: Underwrite the backfill optionality. If the landlord can backfill Kroger within the 365-day cure period with a comparable grocer (Sprouts, Publix entering the market) or a broad-definition replacement (LA Fitness, urgent-care medical complex, Burlington), the rent abatement on inline GLA reverses and Tier 3 termination rights never vest. The institutional underwriter prices the cure-period optionality at 30–60% of the cascade gap — that is, the bid floor on the center is roughly $17.7M (cascade hits and nobody backfills) plus 30–60% of $20.3M (the value recoverable on a successful cure), or roughly $24–30M. The 365-day cure with broad-definition replacement is the asset.

Anchor-loss cascade scenarios on the worked $125M-scale grocery-anchored example. The cascade is non-linear in two directions: failure to cure compounds, and a successful broad-definition cure recovers nearly all value. The 365-day cure period and the comparable-replacement definition are the institutional levers worth real basis points.

The institutional reading: the gap between Scenario 2 ($17.7M) and Scenario 4 ($38.5M) is a $20.8M range of value driven entirely by the landlord's ability to execute a cure within the contractual window. Underwriting the asset at the midpoint of $24–30M is the institutional convention; the spread between the bid and the stabilized value is the option premium the buyer pays for the cure-period optionality. Sellers who haven't started the backfill conversation before listing leave that premium on the table.

How to Model It

Modeling the anchor-economics + co-tenancy cascade requires three structural pieces that most Excel-templated retail pro formas omit. The institutional model has them; the spreadsheet you downloaded from a brokerage probably doesn't.

Suite-level lease abstract with co-tenancy flags. Every suite needs not just rent and term, but a co-tenancy presence flag (yes / no), a trigger type (occupancy threshold / named anchor / both), a trigger threshold (occupancy %, named anchor list), a cure-period length in days, a remedy type (50% abatement / percentage-rent / both with election), and a termination-right vesting period. AQ-301's suite-level lease abstract carries these as required fields; a generic Argus or Excel retail template typically carries only the rent and term, leaving the co-tenancy mechanics implicit. Implicit co-tenancy is the source of every "we didn't see that cascade coming" institutional embarrassment.

Trigger-engine logic on the rent schedule. The rent schedule needs a side calculation that, at each forward period, checks whether any defined trigger is firing (anchor named in any inline lease has gone dark; center occupancy has dropped below the lowest threshold in any inline lease). If a trigger fires, the cascade calculation engages: reduce the affected suite rents per the remedy schedule, hold the reduction through the cure period, and either restore full rent (cure succeeds) or vest the termination right (cure fails). The institutional model runs this as a deterministic side panel rather than as an embedded if-statement chain in the main rent schedule, because the cascade often cascades — a triggered Tier 3 termination on one suite drops occupancy further, potentially triggering Tier 1 abatement on adjacent suites.

Backfill-curve scenario layer. The output of the model needs three named scenarios on the cascade: base (anchor stays), cascade-no-cure (anchor exits, no backfill within 365 days), and cascade-cured (anchor exits, comparable replacement signed within 365 days). The institutional underwriter prices the deal at a probability-weighted blend — typically 70–80% base, 15–25% cure, 5–15% no-cure for stabilized institutional assets with strong backfill demand; closer to 50/30/20 for B-class centers in secondary markets. The blended weighted-average value is the underwriting bid floor; the gap to stabilized value is the cure-period option premium the seller failed to capture.

Sensitivity on cure-period length and replacement-definition breadth. The institutional model exposes two sensitivity dials: cure-period length (180 / 270 / 365 days) and replacement-definition breadth (narrow / medium / broad). The 50–150 bps of cap-rate value cited above lives in these two sensitivities. Sellers with sloppy lease abstracts that don't surface the cure-period length deny their buyers the optionality value; buyers who don't request the underlying lease forms during due diligence accept the seller's representation at face value and miss the wedge.

Build It in Apers

Common Mistakes in Anchor + Co-Tenancy Underwriting

• Treating the anchor lease as a "long-term tenant" rather than as the foot-traffic engine. The anchor's $11/SF is not below market; it's exactly market for the position the anchor occupies in the rent-roll dependency chain. Modeling the anchor at "market rent on rollover" misreads the economics entirely. The institutional convention is that the anchor's rent stays at its contracted level (with fixed bumps or CPI) for the full term plus expected options; you do not mark the anchor to inline-rent market because the foot-traffic externality breaks if you try.

• Ignoring the co-tenancy clauses at acquisition because the anchor is "stable." Every anchor is stable until it isn't. The institutional underwriter prices the cascade scenario at acquisition because it is structurally present in the leases, not because the anchor is expected to leave. Brixmor, Phillips Edison, Regency, Kimco, and Federal Realty all run co-tenancy stress tests across the portfolio every quarter; the institutional REPE acquirer who skips that work at acquisition misprices the asset.

• Underwriting the named-anchor trigger as "if Kroger leaves we sign Publix" without checking the comparable-replacement definition. If the inline leases define "comparable" as "a first-quality grocery store of at least 50,000 SF operating under a nationally recognized banner," and the only available backfill is a 30,000 SF Sprouts or a 40,000 SF off-price box, the replacement doesn't qualify and the cascade still triggers. Read the comparable-replacement language in every material inline lease before pricing the cure-period optionality.

• Missing the "go-dark" vs "vacate" distinction. The anchor that goes dark (closes the store but keeps paying rent through lease end) and the anchor that vacates (rejects the lease in bankruptcy, surrenders, or exercises termination) produce different cash-flow outcomes for the landlord, but the inline co-tenancy triggers typically fire on "open and operating" rather than on "rent-paying." Going dark fires the cascade. The lease language matters: confirm "open and operating" vs. "lease in effect" in every inline co-tenancy clause.

• Sizing the cascade against gross potential rent instead of effective rent. The cascade hits the rent that's currently in place, not the rent the landlord could be charging if market rents rose. If a 50,000 SF inline shop bay is contractually at $32/SF today and market is $38/SF, the cascade abates the contracted $32, not the hypothetical $38. Junior underwriters sometimes inflate the cascade by sizing it against gross potential, which overstates the impact and misprices the bid.

• Ignoring the "fish or cut bait" provision in the landlord's favor. Inline tenants that have been on 50% abatement for 18–24 months past the cure period are not paying market rent and are unlikely to terminate voluntarily — the abatement is too good. Landlords without a "fish or cut bait" provision in the lease lose the inline tenant's rent indefinitely. The institutional landlord-side counsel writes this provision in every form; the institutional acquirer reads for it in due diligence.

• Pricing the cascade probability uniformly across institutional and B-class centers. Stabilized institutional grocery-anchored centers in MSA-1 markets have 5–15% no-cure probabilities because the backfill bench (Sprouts, Publix, Kroger reentry, TJX/Ross at junior-anchor scale, Burlington at junior-anchor scale, LA Fitness, urgent-care/medical) is deep. B-class centers in secondary or tertiary markets routinely run 20–40% no-cure probabilities because the backfill demand isn't there. Using a uniform 10% no-cure probability across all retail acquisitions misprices both ends — you overpay for the B-class and underpay for the institutional.

FAQ

Related Articles

• Pad Sites & Outparcels: Ground Lease Economics, QSR Credit, and the 2026 Cap Rate Stack — the companion piece on outparcel underwriting and the QSR ground-lease cap-rate stack; outparcels sit on separate ground leases that co-tenancy clauses do not reach.
• Grocery-Anchored Retail: Below-Market Anchor Rent and Inline Economics — deeper dive on the grocery-anchored subtype, the institutional bid for Whole Foods / Publix / Kroger anchored centers, and the inline rent premium that the anchor underwrites.
• Dark Stores and Big-Box Vacancy: Retenanting Economics — the value-add scenario when the anchor goes dark and the institutional retenanting playbook (TJX/Ross/Burlington junior-anchor conversions, fitness/medical repositionings).
• Net Lease Single-Tenant Underwriting: Credit Spreads and Cap Rate Decomposition — the STNL credit framework that explains why corporate-guaranteed anchors trade tight to the risk-free rate while franchisee-guaranteed boxes carry a 70–90 bps premium.
• Cap Rate Calculator and Formula — the underlying valuation primitive: the cascade math compounds NOI shock and cap-rate widening into a non-linear value impact.

Sources

• AdventuresinCRE, "Retail Anchor Lease Overview" — institutional-grade walkthrough of the four key anchor-lease provisions (co-tenancy, exclusive use, operating expenses, continuous operations) by attorney Ronald Rohde; the closest competitor on the institutional-underwriting axis.
• AdventuresinCRE, "Co-Tenancy Clause Definition" — glossary entry on co-tenancy with the Briarwood Plaza case study illustrating the cascade from anchor closure to inline rent reductions.
• CREModels, "Co-Tenancy Clauses and Big-Box Anchor Vacancies" — Mike Harris (CREModels) on Forbes covering the "negative feedback loop" framing, the co-tenancy matrix as institutional risk-assessment tool, and the cure-period replacement-anchor mechanics.
• Occupier, "What Is Co-Tenancy?" — tenant-side overview of the occupancy-threshold (70 to 80%) and named-anchor co-tenancy variants; useful for cross-checking the inline-tenant negotiating posture.
• RockStep, "Co-Tenancy Clauses" — covers opening vs ongoing co-tenancy distinction and the "de-risked acquisition" thesis on properties where co-tenancy has already triggered.
• Malakai Sparks, "The Defaulting Anchor" — landlord-side enforcement framework: 180 to 365 day cure periods, performance-based percentage-rent structures, broadened comparable-replacement definitions, and the "fish or cut bait" provision.
• WealthManagement.com, "As Retail Anchors Go Under, Landlords Offer Rent Concessions in Exchange for Co-Tenancy Clauses" — the 2020-era trade publication coverage of JLL's Tom Mullaney describing landlord-side concession-for-waiver negotiations.
• First National Realty Partners, "Anchor Tenants" — sponsor-side definitional overview with the Cedar Center South / Whole Foods illustrative example.
• International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) — industry association reference; ICSC educational materials on lease provisions, anchor-lease structure, and co-tenancy negotiation are referenced by name.
• Boulder Group Q1 2026 Net Lease Research Report — the canonical quarterly cap-rate print referenced for outparcel and STNL pricing context inside shopping-center deals; cited by name (URL referenced in the companion piece on pad-site economics).
• Brixmor Property Group, Phillips Edison & Company, Regency Centers, Kimco Realty, Federal Realty Investment Trust — institutional shopping-center REIT disclosures on portfolio anchor mix, co-tenancy stress tests, and post-2022 backfill activity (cited by name; supporting REIT 10-K and supplemental disclosures).
• TJX Companies, Ross Stores, Burlington Stores 2024–2025 annual reports — published rent-coverage ratios and sales-PSF context for the discount/off-price backfill cohort.