Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1972
ISSN
0010-1958
Publisher
Columbia Law School
Language
en-US
Abstract
Rockefeller Plaza, Madison Square Garden, the Pan Am Building, the Waldorf-Astoria, the New York Hilton, the Washbridge apartment development, and numerous cooperative residential, and office buildings are modem monuments to the vitality, flexibility, and utility of the long term ground lease. The long term ground lease is primarily an urban financing and investment vehicle that enables a lessor to convey land or air rights to a lessee who undertakes to develop the property through new construction or substantial improvements. As such, this device comprises relationships that embrace the criteria of time and function. In terms of time, common usage in the real estate industry treats twenty-one years, exclusive of renewal options, as the shortest period for the long term ground lease.2 Yet, the length of time alone does not adequately distinguish such a lease from a thirty-year rental of office space. The additional criterion of function is the distinguishing feature of a long term ground lease, since it is more than a temporary transfer of possession in exchange for rent. Invariably it is a net lease,3 with the lessor enjoying care-free ground rental income and the lessee assuming the managerial roles of developing and operating the property. Indeed, it is this phenomenon of separating ownership from operation that makes the net lease such a flexible commercial device.
Recommended Citation
Neil S. Hecht,
Variable Rental Provisions in Long Term Ground Leases
,
72
Columbia Law Review
625
(1972).
Available at:
https://doi.org/10.2307/1121285
