Michael K. Kuhn

Over his career, Michael has handled the office leasing for as many as six Class “A” downtown office buildings in Houston, Texas. Currently, he does the leasing work for two of the Houston area’s premier shopping districts. His practice is not limited to either Houston or Texas, and he routinely handles office and retail leasing matters throughout the country.

• Represented the owner of the Rice Village Shopping Center in the lease negotiations for most of the existing tenants including Shake Shack, Altar’d State, Front Burner Restaurants (Sixty Vines), Warby Parker, Hopdoddy, CB2, West Elm, and Mendocino Farms Sandwiches.
• Represented the owner/developer of Village Towers, a newly-constructed mixed-use office/retail complex, in the lease negotiations for office tenants including 2nd.MD, Prologis, and Spur Energy and notable local restaurant tenants including Texadelphia, Treebeards, and Masraff’s. In 2021, Houston Business Journal named Village Towers a finalist for “Project of the Year” in the Office Building or Campus category of the 2021 Landmark Awards.
• Represented a partnership in negotiating leases with a restaurant group to bring two restaurants to Texas Tower in downtown Houston. Both leases total over 8,000 square feet in the 47-story office tower.
• Represented the landlord of 1000 Main in the early renewal of Shell Trading & Supply North America’s 259,000-square-foot lease. The transaction was named the largest lease deal in Houston in 2021.
• Represented the landlord/redeveloper of The Shops at Houston Center in negotiating a lease to add an indoor mini-golf entertainment venue to the complex.
• Represented a Houston developer in leasing Montrose Collective, a mixed-use project on Lower Westheimer which includes 100,000 square feet of office space and more than 50,000 square feet of retail.
• Represented the landlord/redeveloper of a Fort Lauderdale high-rise building, in the relocation of the ground floor national bank to temporary premises during the redevelopment phase and a permanent lease with the bank upon project completion.
• Successfully renegotiated an existing lease with a prominent consumer electronics retailer, for the relocation of the store to a new downsized location in the same shopping center, in Irving, Texas.
• Successfully negotiated a lease restructuring in a downtown Chicago office building involving a Fortune 500 global document technology company’s spin-off of its HR consulting business line.
• Handled the 10-year extension of a headquarters lease for a major Houston-based engineering firm, downsizing from three floors to two.
• Handled the substantial expansion of lease space for a European-based manufacturing/electronics company, at a Class “A” suburban Houston office building, addressing issues arising from the tenant’s consolidation of various business divisions into the building.
• Negotiated a 40,000 square foot major anchor lease with a national off-price department store retailer, within a major “Town Center” shopping district in New Braunfels, Texas.
• Handled lease negotiations for a 60,000 square foot retail lease to a major home appliance retailer, including obtaining an exemption to existing exclusions from a neighboring national home improvement chain.

• The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White Inc.), Real Estate Law, 2008-2016, 2018-2022
• “Super Lawyer,” Super Lawyers by Thomson Reuters, 2005-2013, 2021
• Top Lawyers, H Texas magazine, 2006-2010
• Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, 2004-2007
  • Ranked for Real Estate – Texas

• “Redefining Gross Sales as Omnichannel Retailing Takes Hold,” ICSC US Shopping Center Law Conference Roundtable (November 2021)
• “Rent Relief in the Time of Pandemic,” UT Law CLE’s Bernard O. Dow Leasing Institute (November 2020)
• “Allocating Risk in Real Estate Leases: Contractual Indemnities, Additional Insured Endorsements and Waivers of Subrogation,” Strafford Publications Webinar (September 2016)