St. Louis Industrial Space Property Management: What Can I Include When Negotiating Tenant Improvements?

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Tenant Improvements Impact the Quality of the Industrial Space in St. Louis You Occupy.

When you’re negotiating with your landlord’s property management team about the terms of your new lease, pay careful attention to your tenant improvements. While tenants frequently focus on their rent above all else, tenant improvements impact what it’s like to occupy the industrial St. Louis space. When done right, they can lower your occupancy costs and increase your workers’ productivity. Furthermore, when it comes to TI allowances, you can usually use them for anything.

TI Basics

Landlords and property management companies commonly give away TI allowances as a part of lease negotiations. The benefit of TIs to clients are clear — they customize the industrial space in St. Louis — but ownership and management also benefits from them. Attractive professional TIs help sell the building to other tenants. They also make you more likely to stay since you’re in a better-suited space. Finally, while many TIs get ripped out for new tenants, many also remain, upgrading the overall building.

Typical TIs

Once you get a TI allowance, it’s time to sit down with your architect and industrial St. Louis space planner to figure out what to do with your space. Here are some of the things that you may choose to use your TI allowance on:

  • Removing existing walls to create a collaboration-friendly open work space.
  • Upgrading electrical systems to support special equipment that you use in your business.
  • Renovating rest rooms or break rooms to make your team more comfortable while they’re at work.
  • Installing high-efficiency lighting for lower electric bills.
  • Integrating new decorative materials into the space to create an upgraded appearance.
  • Rerouting HVAC ducts to create special cooling for server rooms, helping your equipment run cooler and more reliably
  • Creating an in-office cafe to allow employees to casually meet and share ideas.

Property Management’s Role in TIs

A building’s property management team can be a significant asset in stretching your TI dollars. Here are three ways that they can help make your TI project a success:

  1. They’ve seen many tenants before you configure their industrial spaces in St. Louis, so they may have ideas that you wouldn’t think of. This is especially valuable if you’re considering occupying a rehabilitated older building that may have unique features that require a different approach to space configuration.
  2. The property management team knows the building’s ins-and-outs and may be able to help your architect find more efficient ways of working with the systems that are already there. This can both reduce your construction time and reduce the project’s overall cost, helping you stay within your TI allowance.

Finally, they’re also familiar with what’s already in your space and may be able to help you find components that can be reused. Doing something as simple as reusing ceiling tiles or existing doors can save you a few dollars per square foot. This does more than just save money, though. It also reduces the environmental footprint of your project since you reduce the amount of construction materials that go into the waste stream.

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