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Multitenant Facility Security: Good Neighbors Make Good Fences

Lessons for securing multi-tenant facilities. (Guess what: The landlord isn't going to help much.)

By Lauren Gibbons Paul

April 01, 2005 — CSO — Rich Maurer was once hired to do security consulting for a property management company that had recently leased space to a child-care center. Not 30 seconds into the site visit Maurer, a managing director in the government services division of Kroll, realized this particular day-care business was going to be nestled in an extraordinary setting. "I'm standing in the parking lot in front of the day-care center," he recalls. "I turn my head to the left and there's an abortion clinic. I look beyond the clinic and I see the Israeli consulate. I turn my head to the right and I see the county probation department. Across the street the other way is the Federal Reserve Bank. It was like drawing a bull's-eye in red on this parking lot.

"We went to a whole other level of security plan," says Maurer.

Indeed. Maurer's story is a good illustration of the challenge of security in multi-tenant facilities such as office parks, office towers and malls. The threats facing one occupant may differ significantly from the risks neighboring businesses bring to the party. And vulnerabilities in one tenant's defenses can lead to problems for the others. What's more, no single entity is accountable for security across the entire facility; if you mistakenly think the landlord is responsible, keep reading.

CSO tapped Maurer (a past chairman of the physical security council for ASIS International) and other experts to help identify some basic principles, necessary steps and common gaffes for readers who share space with other businesses.

Long-established principles of tort law discourage landlords from providing extra security measures.

Tim Bartkowiak wears both the landlord hat and the tenant hat. Bartkowiak is director of security and loss prevention for the $2 billion retailer Spartan Stores, which operates 54 supermarkets, 21 drugstores and three fuel centers in the Midwest. Bartkowiak has plenty of experience as both landlord and tenant in strip mall settings where the Spartan market is the anchor store. When it comes to security issues in these settings, beyond securing the common areas, Bartkowiak believes responsibility rests firmly on the tenant's shoulders.

So in new properties operated by Spartan, the company will provide some basic security features such as high-quality locks, sturdy windows and metal doors, but it does not offer closed-circuit TV (CCTV) monitoring or uniformed security guards patrolling the parking lot at night. In Bartkowiak's opinion, if Spartan supplied those things as a landlord, the company would be opening itself up to the impression that it is wholly responsible for the tenant's securityand that's not the case. "We don't want anyone to say, The only reason I leased here is because of these extra measures you took, and I got robbed in the middle of the night," he says. The more you take on, the more you'll be held accountable for.