MySquareFeet Blog

Office Suites, A Sweet Alternative

For Valentine's Day, I thought I would examine a "suite" alternative to leasing conventional office space for small businesses.  They go by many names, Office Suites, Executive Centers, Business Centers, Virtual Offices, or Executive Offices, and offer many different service packages and levels, from basic to gold plated opulence, but they all do one basic thing - provide an immediate plug-and-play office for your business.

I had never actually visited one of these services, so I called upon Tom Jamison of Connecticut Business Centers to give me a personal tour and behind the scenes look at his operation.  It was an interesting visit and I now think about the benefits these services can offer a small tenant in a different light.  To quote Tom, "If you tell me you want an office today, you can be in business with a T-1 connection here tomorrow." 

On Rentable Square Feet, Usable Square Feet and Measuring Office Space

In response to my post “How a bad lease can bankrupt your small business.” I got an email from Jewell in Orange County, CA. She asked:

“What do you do to verify the difference between rentable and usable square feet?  We have had many answers about how it was arrived at…the usable sq ft is 841 and the rentable sq ft is 1067.  I would love to have some tips on how to verify the difference.”

In my twenty plus years in commercial real estate, I have had as many explanations from owners for arriving at building measurements as there are buildings, it seems.  Miraculously, when some buildings were sold, they were one size with Owner A, and the next day, Owner B would re-measure the building and it was significantly larger!  We jokingly called this “rubber ruler” measurements.  However, there are some conventional standards for building measurement which will point you in the right direction.

For Lease Signs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears

A friend of mine was telling me the story of how she was looking for space for her office the other day.  She only needed a couple of offices, which is clearly not the type of requirement that sets a commercial broker's heart on fire, so she decided to try to find it herself.

She had checked on line at my site MySquareFeet but there was nothing suitable posted, then she checked the newspaper but nothing was there either.  So, she took to the road, because "for-lease" signs are commonly found in front of buildings with space available, in fact there were about 50 signs on a two-mile stretch of the Post Road where she was looking.  She told me that it was quite possibly the most frustrating thing she had to do and she went on and on about how the signs were impossible to read, she almost crashed her car trying to pick up phone numbers while going 40 MPH and most of the signs didn't help much.

Her adventure reminded me of the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, some signs were too big, some were too small, but in this case hardly any were just right.

How much space do you need for your business?

As a commercial real estate consultant, here's a questions I frequently hear. "How do I determine how much space I need for my business?" When you are considering a move for your company, or just starting out, you need to plan carefully when you calculate how much office space you need. Either too much, or too little space can be budget breakers.

Having the wrong space can interrupt your business or make it difficult to operate, but there are some techniques you can employ to get it just right. First, you need to assess your current situation, and then decide what your expectations are for the growth of your business over the next few years. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How many people do I currently employ?
• Does each employee need an individual desk or is sharing possible?
• Do I expect to add any staff in the next couple of years?
• Over what period of time will I add the staff?
• What kind of staff will I be adding, executive, administrative, or sales?