My wife and I toured some retail spaces for an idea she had about a year ago. One baby later and we had to put it off. However, one of the spaces we toured in Westchester has me puzzled. It was January we saw it, the landlord was eager to fill it. A month after we saw it, the “for rent” sign was taken down and clearly some work had begun. Fast forward to now, almost a year later and the place is still yet to open. They are clearly still doing renovations, albeit very slowly, like molasses compared to the City.
Is this lessee paying rent the entire time to the lessor? Do landlords work out some sort of interim rents while not open for the lessee, typically? I can’t imagine paying rent on a space and moving so slowly to open.
Could be lots of reasons.
Every business owner and landlord negotiates a different contract with regards to T&I, free rent, etc…
The smart owners don’t sign the lease till they have permits in hand, contract ready to sign for build out, to get build out going.
But even then that doesn’t mean there arent uncontrollable issues that pop up during construction that bring things to a halt.
There are others that sign a lease, then get architect, get permits, and hope it will work and hope the build out fits in budget.
You never know if it’s a case of something where everything was planned and something odd was found in construction and they need to get extra permits and it’s led to cost overruns and huge delays
Could be the Reddit posts of someone that that had $50k to start a business, signed the lease, then got drawings, then it took months for permits, then they started construction, they had to start paying rent, then their $50k ran out, rent started, and they still have $50k left of build out……
Or everywhere in between