CAM reconciliation audit. The laundromat is the largest water user in the center by a wide margin, so
the landlord allocates the master water meter by tenant square footage but then applies what he
calls a usage weighting that puts about 70 percent of the total on my client.
Buried in that master meter is the irrigation for the entire center. There is no separate irrigation
meter. So my client is paying roughly 70 percent of the landscaping water for a property where they
occupy 4,400 of 31,000 square feet and have no landscaping adjacent to their space.
Three years of this. I am estimating the irrigation portion at 90k gallons a year based on seasonal
variation in the master meter during hours the laundromat is closed, which is not a perfect proxy but
is defensible.
Lease says utilities are allocated on a reasonable basis determined by landlord. That word reasonable
is doing a lot of work. Anyone had success arguing that a usage-weighted allocation has to exclude
loads the tenant demonstrably cannot cause?
the landlord allocates the master water meter by tenant square footage but then applies what he
calls a usage weighting that puts about 70 percent of the total on my client.
Buried in that master meter is the irrigation for the entire center. There is no separate irrigation
meter. So my client is paying roughly 70 percent of the landscaping water for a property where they
occupy 4,400 of 31,000 square feet and have no landscaping adjacent to their space.
Three years of this. I am estimating the irrigation portion at 90k gallons a year based on seasonal
variation in the master meter during hours the laundromat is closed, which is not a perfect proxy but
is defensible.
Lease says utilities are allocated on a reasonable basis determined by landlord. That word reasonable
is doing a lot of work. Anyone had success arguing that a usage-weighted allocation has to exclude
loads the tenant demonstrably cannot cause?