The decision
Building for a Tenant You Have, or One You Hope For
The two produce different buildings, and the differences are mostly in decisions you cannot revisit.
The geotechnical report, the intended clear height and the likely tenant profile. Those three tell us more than a full set of drawings.
What changes
A known tenant lets you resolve the things a speculative building has to guess at.
- Fire protection designed to a real commodity class instead of an assumption.
- Slab flatness specified to the equipment that will actually run on it.
- Joint layout coordinated with a real rack layout.
- Clear height set to what that tenant needs, not to a market average.
- Door count and court depth matched to the actual operation.
What a speculative building should still do
Document its assumptions and give them to leasing. The commodity class it is sprinklered for, the flatness achieved, the loading it supports, the clear height.
That single page lets a leasing team qualify tenants at inquiry instead of discovering a mismatch after a lease is signed — which is where speculative industrial development actually goes wrong.
The honest position
A speculative building is a set of bets. Some of them will be wrong, and the ones that cost money are fire protection and slab, because both are expensive to change in an occupied building.
Spending a little more on those two is usually the better bet. Spending more on clear height frequently is not, unless the submarket genuinely uses it.
FAQ
Common questions
- What should a spec building over-specify?
- Fire protection and slab, because both are expensive to change in an occupied building.
- Should we over-specify clear height?
- Only if the submarket uses it. It is a multiplier across several systems.
- What should leasing be given?
- A one-page assumptions sheet — commodity class, flatness, loading, clear height.
- Can a build-to-suit convert to spec later?
- Sometimes, and the tenant-specific decisions may not suit the next occupier.
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.