In “Five of the Best Reasons for a Commercial Renovation”, I discussed why you should remodel now if you plan to stay at your current location. In this blog, I offer tips on relocating your business/practice because your current location or building is no longer feasible to use. Note: if you own your existing space, it’s best to consult with your real estate agent to discuss the options regarding selling/renting your building.
Top Reasons to Relocate Your Business:
- Traffic patterns change over time. Perhaps you’re no longer in an active area and therefore, you aren’t readily drawing traffic to your business/practice. Seeking space in an area that’s busier could help your bottom line; however you likely will pay higher rent than you're paying now.
- Your building needs a major update either to the structure/ infrastructure/energy efficiencies that exceed the cost of building a new building.
- You need to expand your building to accommodate new equipment or additional staff, but you’ve run out of room or can't meet parking and zoning requirements.
- You originally started your business in a house and now the maintenance costs have become too much and/or you can’t alter the space for efficient use.
When Choosing Your New Location:
We find that most of our clients already have a good idea of what type of space and possible location in which they want to move when they come to us to discuss design. Our biggest advice is to establish your budget before you start your search and consult with your general contractor/design-builder as you start looking. When considering an existing building, your contractor can tell you a lot about the quality of the structure, the infrastructure, the amount of work that needs to be done and the parking lot options. If you’re looking to build a new building, your contractor/design-builder can help you investigate the utilities available and the size or layout recommended for the lot you’re considering.
How to Move with Minimal Downtime:
Once the building is constructed and you’re ready to move, the key is to test the phone and network systems before you begin your move. Another good idea is to “hire” your staff to move their own items by having them use a work day to pack all their items from their personal office and other areas for which they’re responsible, have a moving company transport the boxes and furniture to the new location, and then have the staff member unpack his or her things. All this is done while the IT staff is connecting computers and phones to the network. On day three (or earlier) you’re up and running. Those in the medical/dental industry can get more information from our blog “Moving Your Practice”.
Notifying All Necessary Parties
Making a move can be a huge deal in retaining your present customers/patients. You have to consider the distance of their drive to the new location in order to make sure that they can still easily access you. Then the good news is that you have a big message to communicate with them, probably multiple times. Also, you have a benefit of the positive attributes of the move to promote, i.e. better location, easier access, more space, new equipment, or a more modern aesthetic. It’s good to start promoting during construction to get extra buzz about your business/practice. With email, social networks and traditional means of advertising, you should be able to establish a far reaching message to connect to existing and potential clients/patients.
Wolgast Corporation has provided construction services to many companies that have relocated their business. From the initial building or site visit (free of cost for qualified projects), to designing the building through to providing construction, we can also provide these services to you and help your transition go as smoothly as possible. Contact us at 800-965-4278 to get started.
