When your business is looking for a new space to operate, you have the golden opportunity to build out your commercial business space to fit your needs. Whether you buy/build or lease, your real estate is going to come with relatively few constraints on internal use. Walls and rooms can even be moved around, in most cases, as the structural supports are fairly independent of where your walls are located. Commercial business space is marketed by the real estate agents who you are leasing or buying from as an adaptable space that you can modify to your needs, both inside and out.
Your new commercial business space has a lot of room to customize even before you move in. If you’re looking to find the right commercial business space, you’re going to have a lot of choices, especially if your new office is in a major metropolitan area with a lot of professional real estate available. You can choose anything from coworking space for a small business, to an independent building, to up to several floors in an office tower, all for quite reasonable rates.
Hardscape Contracting to Improve Access and Beauty
One of the first decisions you will need to make, based on the characteristics of your business, is how much hardscaping you want to do around your new commercial business space. With a new office comes new parking and approach spaces, crafting new and different opportunities for your customers and employees to approach your office.
A well-hardscaped business front can be the first part of creating an inviting business environment, with your sidewalks and parking aprons being opportunities to both showcases what your business is about and provide accommodations for all kinds of mobility in your new building.
Find Your Office Cleaning Contractors
It is inevitable: Offices are filthy places. Between eating at desks and the generalized filth of having dozens of human beings milling about for eight to sixteen hours a day, the fact is that your office builds up phenomenal quantities of trash and dust throughout the year. You will quickly find yourself overwhelmed without cleaning, and that normally will mean hired contractors, in addition to your trash service. Office cleaning for your commercial business space will normally be contracted out and if you’re located in an office tower, it will probably go along with whichever contractors are hired by tower management in general, since they’re already there. Office cleaners will clean your computer screens, dust keyboards, recycle paper and empty your trash cans, clean and disinfect surfaces, windows, and floors, and generally put everything to rights that are typically put askew during a business day. Most cleaning services will quote you a rate per square foot of office space. Make sure to budget this into your operating allowances.
Office Heating Contractor
If you’re located in an office tower or a coworking space, your heating will already be included in your rent. It will be part of your space expenses that are already factored in because the building mechanical plant, or the space provider, includes full HVAC. If you are not, you will have to look at heating contractors during the winter as much as air conditioning contractors during the summer. Your computers don’t generate enough heat all by themselves to keep your space comfortable, especially in a Minnesota or Boston winter. Heating is another major cost of your commercial business space that you’ll need to decide about during the planning phase. Your contractors’ quality of work balanced against their cost is going to be a major factor. Remember that the lowest bidder is only: The cheapest option. You will need to balance the price quoted against the services promised to get the best deal for your company.
Roofing for your business
When is the last time your business’s roof has been checked or repaired? If you’re moving into a building that was unoccupied for a while before you checked in, you’ll probably need a new roof for your commercial business space. If you’re moving into one that was just occupied, you’re still going to need a roofer on call, because the roof is subjected to the harshest environmental conditions of any part of your business’ building, and you’re going to need to make sure that it’s completely good to go. Either way, your space’s roof is an integral part of your expenses. In freestanding commercial buildings, the roof is usually where the main HVAC systems are located, to make them easier to access for contractors (remember when we talked about them, right?).
In that case, part of maintaining your roof is maintaining the façade pieces that protect the roof-mounted HVAC systems from being seen from street level, making sure that the average passerby doesn’t see the huge plants and machines needed to keep your business cool and comfortable for all of your customers. While you serve your customers inside, hiding the machinery on the roof is important to make sure that future customers on the street see a sleek, attractive building. Your roofing contractor will take care of all of these functions, as well as come by frequently for repairs and restoration whenever your hard-working roof suffers damage from hail, standing water, heavy snow, or other hazards external to your business (unless of course, your business is weather forecasting, then it might simply be part of your business).
Glazing Your Building’s Windows
For any office, a view of the outside environment is an important way to make employees feel connected to the world around them. Your glass contractors are an important part of accomplishing that. Your contractors will be able to handle almost every aspect of your building’s glazing. Modern office building glass includes double-paned windows to effectively and efficiently insulate your interior spaces from heat and cold. As many businesses show, professional glass contractors are also important because you can’t always count on the business to be normal. Rocks can be thrown through your windows, either from passing cars/trucks or from mischievous activities. Having a glass contractor on call will ensure that your business can rapidly continue and guarantee access to broken windows. Broken panes can happen naturally as well. Heat expansion and contraction can create loosened panes or simply cause them to crack in their frames, and this change will need to be replaced as soon as it’s noticed – probably by an employee noticing a draft as they pass by the compromised window pane. If your glass contractors are not included in your lease, they represent a great opportunity to build relationships with area businesses.
Building Your Façade
After the parking area, the external layout and structure of your business’s approach as represented by the building’s exterior façade is the most important first impression you can give to employees and guests alike. Your exterior contractors can work with you as you prepare for your move-in date to your new commercial business space to craft a facing and an identity that are unique to your business. Even if you’re moving into a space that the previous tenant just departed from a few weeks or even a few days ago, you can still put your mark on this space. Signage can be present from day one. You can also get your façade ready to go up the moment your exterior contractors are ready to approach the building. Signage will need to go up the weekend before you open your doors unless your space was previously abandoned by another tenant and is ready for you to move in. This will be something that goes according to your own present needs and future requirements.
Commercial Properties For Sale
When it comes to moving into a new retail or commercial business space, there’s nothing better than being able to look across your new office and knowing that you own the space. This is a situation where the sky is the limit in terms of your ability to adapt the space to your needs. There’s no need to leave the space in a condition that can be quickly turned around to another tenant because if and when you leave the space, your real estate agent will likely be able to turn it around to another company, or your company’s internal real estate division will be able to hang onto it and do whatever they will with it. This will normally be for businesses with multiple branches, that can have an internal real estate division, of course.
Most business owners, however, want to own their building – if not immediately, certainly eventually, for the freedom that such an arrangement brings. With ownership, however, come certain costs – the upkeep of your property is entirely yours, without any landlord or externally provided services to keep you afloat (not even utilities like water and heating, which are often provided in leased buildings as part of the monthly rent charged for the space). With great power comes great responsibility, and you will be able to quickly tell what the needs of your business are toward your real estate holdings. It’s not always easy for a business owner to hear that he needs to rent a property rather than own it, but if that’s what you find out, then plans for the ownership of your building can always be put on hold for a later time.
It’s Electric!
Commercial electricians will be a critical part of your move-in plan. If your company is building out a leased space, you will need adequate wiring for all of your office equipment and lighting, and you’ll need it before the move-in date. It won’t do to have employees trying to hook their computers into dead outlets and your copiers and printers tripping your circuit breakers. Electrician service should come in no less than a week before move-in, preferably at least a month beforehand, to make sure that all of your electrical work is both adequately supplied and up to code. The shorter the time your electrician service has to work before the day you need to move in, the less time you’ll have to code and fix any apparent faults. So be proactive about how your business responds to predicted needs once your space is chosen and your plans are being made to move in.
Asphalt Goes Round The World
A place of business that’s not in a coworking space or a tower is likely to have a significant amount of work to be done in the parking lot and other support spaces that require paving, especially if they’ve sat idle for any amount of time at all. Asphalt and concrete do not like being in the elements, especially in northern climates where winter cold and dangerous temperature swings can produce major expansion and contraction stresses on your pavement. Make sure that your commercial paver contractors can handle all of the predicted climatic issues and general repair strains of your concrete and asphalt services. In addition, you’ll need to have pavers on retainer to rapidly take care of any major asphalt damage, like potholes, that might appear at any time in the freeze-thaw or summer heating cycles. If you have a damaged parking lot or parking ramp, your customers will see it and they will probably not be impressed.
There are a lot of issues that go toward building out or leasing out a brand-new commercial space for your business. Being able to predict and adapt to them, however, is one of the reasons most entrepreneurs go into business in the first place. Your business will be better for having moved into its new space and your customers will enjoy doing business with you if they can see the work that you’ve put into your new building. Contact your local contractors and real estate agents to begin the process of moving your business into a new building today.