Coresight Research is tracking roughly 7,900 U.S. store closures against 5,500 openings for 2026, technically the lowest closure count in three years, but the number underneath it is worse: openings ran 47% behind last year’s pace through the first thirteen weeks.[1] GameStop has announced 430 to 500 closures across more than forty states. Foot Locker, now under Dick’s Sporting Goods, is still working through a 400-store target set the year before. Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Wendy’s are each closing stores by the hundreds.[1] Almost none of those leases required the tenant to keep the lights on. Rent still had to get paid. The doors just didn’t have to open.
A commercial lease does not obligate a tenant to actually run a business inside the space unless the lease says so in specific, operational language, and even where that language exists, the landlord’s remedy for a tenant that goes dark anyway is usually a check, not a court order to reopen.
A duty to operate has to be written into the lease; no court will read it in. The rent covenant obligates the tenant to pay, not to occupy in any active sense. Absent a clause that expressly requires the tenant to conduct business, keep specified hours, or maintain staffing, courts consistently decline to imply a continuous-operation duty, even when a dark storefront is obviously bad for the landlord and everyone leasing space nearby.[2]
Even with the clause in hand, the traditional remedy for breaking it was money, not an injunction. In M. Leo Storch Partnership v. Erol’s, Inc., a Maryland appellate court in 1993 declined to force a video-rental tenant to keep operating despite a continuous-operation clause in its lease, upholding the trial court’s refusal to grant an injunction. For decades, that was the standard posture: landlords could sue for damages after the fact, not compel a business to stay open against its will.[3]
Then, in 2017, an Indiana court ordered Starbucks to keep 77 Teavana stores running while the case was still pending. Simon Property Group sued to stop Starbucks from closing 77 Teavana locations inside Simon-owned malls, leaning on the continuous-operation clauses in those leases. The Indiana Superior Court granted a preliminary injunction, finding Simon likely to win at trial, and ordered the stores to stay open for the duration of the litigation. It was one of the only times a court has actually forced a national retailer back behind its own counter over a lease clause rather than just awarding damages.[3]
What separates those two outcomes is how specific the operating language is and whether the lease names its own remedy. The clauses that hold up in court don’t just say “continuous operation.” They spell out hours, staffing levels, and inventory (“full staff and full stock of merchandise”), and they include the tenant’s acknowledgment that going dark causes the landlord real, named harm: lost co-tenancy compliance, reduced marketability, a lower valuation on refinance. A clause that just cross-references the general default-and-remedies section of the lease is the kind that gets read narrowly, or not enforced at all.[4]
A dark anchor doesn’t just cost the landlord that one tenant’s foot traffic. It can trip every co-tenancy clause the neighbors are holding. Saks, Eddie Bauer, Claire’s, and At Home have all closed or announced closures in 2026, and every one of those exits can pull the co-tenancy trigger in a lease none of those companies signed, cutting rent or handing out termination rights to tenants three doors down.
A continuous-operation clause and a co-tenancy clause sit on opposite sides of the same vacancy: one is the landlord’s attempt to stop a tenant from going dark in the first place, the other is what the neighboring tenants get to do once it happens anyway. A landlord who only negotiated the second one is depending entirely on other tenants’ leverage to keep the center full.
Drafting the clause so it actually says what you mean#
Acrebase’s clause library lets a landlord’s counsel pull every continuous-operation clause across a portfolio and see, in one view, which leases just cross-reference the default section and which ones actually name hours, staffing, and a specific remedy. During redlining, it flags when incoming tenant language quietly waters an operating covenant down to “commercially reasonable efforts” or strips the reliance language a court would need to justify injunctive relief instead of damages. Playbook fallbacks can carry forward the version legal has already approved, so the clause that got Simon Property Group its injunction isn’t reinvented, or diluted, deal by deal.
If you are a landlord, stop drafting continuous-operation clauses that just point back to the default provisions and hope for the best. Name the hours, name the staffing, name the harm, and decide up front whether you actually want the right to sue for an injunction or you’re fine settling for damages, because the clause language is what determines which one you get.
If you are a tenant, going dark on a struggling location is not automatically a rent-only decision. Read what your lease actually requires before you flip the sign to closed, because the difference between owing a landlord money and owing a landlord an open store came down, in Indiana, to language a lot of tenants never noticed until the lawsuit arrived.
Footnotes
[1] MMC Global Investments, “The Great American Store Closure Tracker: 2026 Edition” (Coresight Research projecting approximately 7,900 closures against 5,500 openings for 2026; GameStop 430–500 announced closures across 40+ states; Foot Locker’s 400-store closure target continuing under Dick’s Sporting Goods ownership; Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Wendy’s each targeting hundreds of closures in H1 2026; store openings down 47% year-over-year through week 13). https://www.mmcginvest.com/post/the-great-american-store-closure-tracker-2026-edition
[2] Aaron Hall, Attorney, “Enforcing Continuous Operation Clauses in Leases” (courts’ general reluctance to imply an operating duty absent express lease language, and the drafting specificity needed to make such a clause enforceable). https://aaronhall.com/enforcing-continuous-operation-clauses-in-leases/
[3] Mondaq / Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, “Continuous Operations Clauses: Can Landlords Force Tenants To Remain In Business?” (discussing M. Leo Storch Partnership v. Erol’s, Inc., 620 A.2d 408 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1993), and Simon Property Group, L.P. v. Starbucks Corp., 2017 WL 6452028 (Ind. Super. Nov. 27, 2017), in which the Indiana Superior Court granted a preliminary injunction requiring Starbucks to keep 77 Teavana stores open pending trial). https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/landlord-tenant--leases/663242/continuous-operations-clauses-can-landlords-force-tenants-to-remain-in-business
[4] Mondaq / Stokes Lawrence, “The Growing Importance Of The ‘Continuous Operations’ Clause In Retail Leases” (drafting recommendations covering specified hours, staffing and inventory levels, reliance language on lost marketability and mortgageability, and the need for remedies stated in the clause itself rather than incorporated by reference from the default section). https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/landlord-tenant--leases/669772/the-growing-importance-of-the-39continuous-operations39-clause-in-retail-leases
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