1010 Potomac Associates and John H. Safer

WERTHEIM, Associate Judge: In this action between a commercial landlord and its trade association tenant, the landlord appeals from a mandatory injunction requiring specific performance of the landlord's obligations to consent to a sublease. The dispute centers on the tenant's right to exercise an option to lease additional space and then sublet all the additional space to a third party at a rate double that payable under the prime lease. Relying upon a clause in the lease permitting subletting only with the landlord's consent, which may not unreasonably be withheld, the landlord contends that the lease's option and subleasing provisions were not intended to permit the tenant to enter into the real estate business in competition with the landlord by flipping the option and subleasing for economic gain in this manner. It is undisputed that the subtenant was otherwise unobjectionable and that the landlord was itself prepared to offer the same space to the same subtenant at the higher rate. Errors are asserted in the trial court's construction of the lease, in its consideration of parol evidence of the parties' intentions, in the admission of evidence of a pre-litigation offer by the landlord to split the sublease profit with the tenant, and in the grant of equitable relief without an adequate showing of irreparable injury. We affirm. I