Fitness leased a building from SVAP. The lease was for a period of 15 years with 3 five-year renewals at the tenant’s option. In the 20th year of the lease, COVID hit, and the tenant was forced by government orders to shutter its gym facility for several months. This decision holds that despite the financial hardship the tenant suffered, it was not excused from paying rent during the COVID closure. Under the lease, the landlord did not guarantee that the tenant could use the premises for a gym during the lease’s entire term, but only that it could do so on the first day of its tenancy. The tenant was not entitled to rent abatement under the lease’s force majeure clause because the government closure orders didn’t prevent the tenant from performing the lease by paying rent. For the same reason, the lease can’t be avoided on grounds of impossibility or impracticability or Civ. Code 1511, which excuses performance when forbidden or delayed by law. Frustration of purpose was also not a viable defense since the closure orders were for only a few months during the multi-decade term of the lease and because the tenant had not sought to invalidate the lease, but only to avoid paying for its occupancy.