ICSC members are learning how to use the organization’s new virtual community to their advantage. Ellen Sinreich, for one, has organized a legal peer group that has two webinars under its belt and a regular Zoom meeting on the horizon.

Sinreich, a longtime ICSC volunteer and former ICSC New York/Northern New Jersey state director, was looking for new ways to network within the organization after the onset of COVID-19. “ICSC is a wonderful way to bring your networking to a higher level, build your business and make friends,” said the founder of law firm The Sinreich Group. “As COVID began, I was wondering, ‘What do we do now?’ I asked a colleague who was an active [ICSC] volunteer: ‘How can I get more involved?’ There were no conferences or events. This colleague started the marketing peer group on the Virtual Community, so I decided to start the Legal Forum.”

The Legal Forum is one of several peer groups within the ICSC Virtual Community. With determination, networking and great content, Sinreich has built the group to 23 members so far.

To generate interest, she launched a webinar series within the platform, separate from the ICSC-run ICSC Connect Virtual Series. “I thought it would be a great idea to do a couple of webinars to address the critical legal issues our industry is grappling with,” she said. “I’ve been preaching for a while that the retail lease be modernized, so we launched our first webinar, Modernizing the Retail Lease in the Time of COVID, in June.”

Sinreich gathered landlords and tenants to discuss two lease provisions she thought were not serving the community: force majeure and the restriction on nontraditional retail uses. “It was a powerful group,” Sinreich said. “The next webinar was a response to the challenges that restaurants are facing. I thought it would be a great idea to discuss how restaurant rents can be restructured to address the very real issues they are facing. I brought in legal counsel from Shake Shack and a successful New York City restaurateur, as well as two shopping center owners and a member of the lending community, and we discussed their COVID experiences.”

The Legal Forum has another webinar on Oct. 1. “This webinar is going to be about landlord and tenant strategies once you’re in a bankruptcy situation: How can you maximize your rights and revenues going forward?” she said. To view the webinar, visit the ICSC Virtual Community’s Legal Forum here and join the peer group.

To facilitate more of a sense of community within the Legal Forum, Sinreich aims to launch a regular Zoom meeting for the peer group’s members. The Legal Forum and other peer groups — like the Marketing Forum and the Student Exchange — also provide discussion areas for ICSC members to discuss the issues of the day.

Sinreich hopes to attract more attorneys and other retail real estate professionals to the Legal Forum. “I welcome participation from other types of professionals in the industry because that enriches the conversation. If you’re a leasing professional or in acquisitions or investment sales, you need to stay on top of legal issues that can make or break transactions you’re working on.”

To join the discussions happening on the ICSC Virtual Community, to start your own discussion or chat with ICSC about launching your own peer group on the Virtual Community, email ICSC vice president of volunteer engagement and membership services Adam Thocher at athocher@icsc.com.