deal me in

Hello all, I'm starting this post to try and get some feed back from the group on how to deal with my landlord. My salon is in a relatively new area and was suppose to be an up and coming spot. However, with the down turn in the housing market, growth has not happened as I anticipated when I opened my salon.

The current state of the economy is certainly not my landlords fault but they are not at all interested in helping out the tenets. They have had 6 business's go under in the last six months and many more are on the verge. (we are in a large outdoor mall that has over 60 stores)

The landlord won't discuss rent breaks, advertising, marketing or even entertain the notion of having events that will draw people to the center. They seem content to watch everyone go out of business. We are in the process of forming a tenet association but even then we won't have much in the leverage.

They won't allow sidewalk sales, tent sales, car shows, boat shows, outdoor concerts, blood drives or anything else that we can think of.

If anyone has had problems with there landlord and found a way to work with them it would be great. I'm afraid that if things stay the way they are we will wind up in court and that doesn't get us anywhere. We, the other owners, are spending to much time fighting with the landlord and not enough time running our business.

Sorry so long winded.

Thanks for your time.

mc