Tenant Improvements

A tenant improvement allowance (TIA) is a dollar amount the landlord agrees to contribute to the tenant's buildout, typically expressed as dollars-per-square-foot or as a flat amount in the lease. Reimbursement usually happens after construction, on submission of paid invoices, lien waivers, and a certificate of substantial completion — the tenant fronts the cost, then the landlord pays into escrow or directly to the GC against the allowance. Some landlords pay progress draws, but most pay one lump sum at occupancy. Read the lease carefully: a 'turnkey TI' clause is different from a 'TIA reimbursement' clause, and the difference can be tens of thousands of dollars in cash flow.

Sometimes. Many leases require the tenant to use the landlord's preferred GC list — usually 2 to 3 contractors who already know the building's systems and specifications — for quality and warranty reasons. Other leases let the tenant pick any licensed, insured GC subject to landlord approval and a certificate of insurance naming the landlord as additional insured. The lease language is usually in the work-letter exhibit. We have worked under both models in the Denver metro and will tell you up front whether we are on a building's preferred-vendor list.

The tenant pays the difference. There are typically three options: (1) write a check at substantial completion for the overage, (2) negotiate to amortize the overage into the lease as additional rent over the lease term, or (3) negotiate a free-rent period that effectively reimburses the overage — landlords sometimes prefer this because it keeps cash on their side. The amortization rate is usually the landlord's market interest rate plus a margin. Decide the overage strategy at the lease negotiation, not at substantial completion when leverage is gone.

A cold dark shell is structure-only with no utilities tapped in, no demising walls, no HVAC distribution, no lighting, no flooring — the most you-bring-everything condition. A white box adds demising walls, basic lighting, perimeter HVAC distribution, primed drywall, and a floor finish ready for the tenant's flooring. A vanilla shell is a finished space with finished flooring, finished ceiling, paint, and basic restrooms — minimal tenant work to occupy. Lease delivery condition drives a substantial portion of the buildout cost, so it is one of the first numbers to negotiate.

Almost always yes. Any change to walls, MEP, or life-safety systems requires a building permit and inspections in every Denver-metro jurisdiction. Cosmetic-only changes (paint, flooring, fixtures without re-wiring) sometimes don't, but the moment a partition moves or an outlet relocates, you are in permit territory. Plan-review timelines run 4 to 8 weeks for a standard office TI in Denver, longer for medical, restaurant, or lab work that triggers Department of Health, fire-marshal, or other agency reviews.

Yes, and on multi-tenant buildings it is often required by the lease or landlord — noisy demolition and core-drilling are typically scheduled outside business hours, and concrete saw-cutting may require weekend work. Off-hours labor adds to the labor budget (overtime or shift premium) but compresses the schedule and avoids tenant complaints, which are themselves a cost when they result in landlord-imposed slowdowns. We map the off-hours schedule in pre-construction and walk it with the property manager before mobilization.

Rent-commencement is the most important date in a TI project — most leases trigger rent payment at the earlier of substantial completion or a fixed date, so a delayed buildout costs the tenant rent on space they cannot occupy. We treat the rent-commencement date as the schedule's hard deadline, run a critical-path-based schedule from permit issuance backward, and call out any owner-side or landlord-side decisions that risk the deadline at the weekly project meeting. If the schedule is at risk, we tell you in writing with the impact and the recovery options before it becomes a missed-deadline letter.

Pre-construction covers feasibility check (does the lease scope fit the space and the timeline), conceptual estimating against the TI allowance, value engineering to bring scope inside the allowance, schedule development from rent-commencement backward, permit-strategy planning by jurisdiction, and constructability review of the architect's drawings. On a TIA-reimbursement deal, we also help structure the draw schedule and the lien-waiver process to minimize the tenant's working-capital exposure. Pre-construction is sometimes a separate fee on a TIA-reimbursement deal and sometimes rolled into the GMP — we discuss this at the proposal stage.