Tenant Improvements in Miami & South Florida

The lease exhibit that describes construction — the work letter — decides more of your budget than the drawings do. It states what condition the landlord delivers the space in, what the allowance is and what it can be spent on, who builds, whose contractors must touch the base-building systems, and the date rent starts whether or not you are open.

We read it before we price. Items tenants routinely assume are the landlord's — demolition of the previous tenant's work, a code-compliant restroom, enough electrical capacity, a working air-conditioning unit — are frequently theirs, and a single one of them can exceed the contingency.

An allowance is usually paid as a reimbursement, after the work is done and documented, and it rarely covers the whole project. You fund construction, then recover the allowance against paid invoices, lien releases, closed permits and a certificate of occupancy. One missing document delays the cheque by weeks.

We organise the project around that from the start: costs tracked in the categories the landlord recognises, lien releases collected with every payment, and a closeout package assembled while the job runs rather than after it ends.

Where the landlord's work ends and yours begins should be a line on a drawing, not an assumption. Demising walls, the storefront, the slab, the roof, the electrical service, the sprinkler main and the air-conditioning units each need an owner. We write the split, price both sides and have it agreed before construction, because that boundary is where tenant improvement budgets go wrong.

The landlord reviews your drawings and your contractor's insurance; the building department reviews the same drawings for code. Neither waits for the other, and neither is a formality. Landlords often require their own engineers to review mechanical, electrical and structural changes, and their own vendors for fire alarm, sprinkler and roofing work. We submit both packages in parallel and price the landlord's required vendors in from the beginning.

Rent usually starts a fixed number of days after delivery of the space, open or not. Every week saved in design, approval and procurement is a week of rent you do not pay on a closed space. We build the schedule backwards from that date and tell you early, in writing, if the date and the scope do not fit.

A second-generation office or retail space typically takes eight to twelve weeks of construction after approvals; a first-generation shell, or a use with heavy plumbing and mechanical loads, four to six months. Landlord approval takes two to six weeks and should begin the day the lease is signed.