Tenant Improvement Build-Outs for Little Rock Landlords

Your suite is vacant. Every month it stays that way costs you a month of rent you will never get back. We build tenant improvements for Central Arkansas property owners on the one schedule that matters: the one in the lease you just signed.

We are landlords too, which changes how we build

Apex Professional Construction is a licensed, insured and bonded Arkansas general contractor with 9+ years and 100+ completed projects. Our ownership also runs a Central Arkansas rental portfolio of 150+ doors. So when you tell us a rent commencement date, we are not hearing a preference. We are hearing the day your income starts, and we have been on your side of that date ourselves.

That shows up in unglamorous ways. We flag the long-lead items in week one instead of week six. We tell you when a scope will not fit the allowance you negotiated, before you sign the work letter rather than after. And we would rather lose a job on price than take one we cannot deliver on the date you need.

What a blown delivery date actually costs

Landlords tend to price a TI build-out on the bid. The bid is the small number. The real cost of a slow build-out is the rent that never starts, and it compounds in three directions at once:

• Free-rent and abatement triggers. Many work letters give the tenant a day of abatement for every day of landlord delay. Now the overrun costs you twice.
• The tenant who walks. A tenant who cannot open on time may have a termination right, and you are back to marketing a suite that is now half-built to somebody else’s specification.

A build-out that comes in slightly higher and finishes on the date is almost always the cheaper outcome. We will show you that math on your own numbers before you award the job.

Work letters and TI allowances, read properly

The work letter is where landlord TI projects quietly go wrong. We read it with you before it is executed, and we are looking for the same handful of things every time:

• What the allowance actually covers. Whether soft costs, permits, design and management fees come out of it, or sit on top of it.
• Where the landlord work ends and the tenant work begins. The single most common source of a mid-project dispute.
• Who owns the overage. Whether the tenant funds the excess directly, amortises it into rent, or it lands on you.
• What triggers substantial completion, and whether a certificate of occupancy or a tenant’s own fixturing is inside or outside that definition.
• Which delays are excusable, and what a tenant-caused change order does to the date.
• What happens to the unspent allowance if the build comes in under.

We are contractors, not your attorney, and we will tell you when something belongs in front of one. But we have watched enough of these to know which clause is about to cost you money.

Whitebox and demising work, so the suite shows

Half of landlord TI work happens before a tenant exists. Demolition, demising walls, a clean whitebox delivery, base building systems brought back to a leasable condition. A suite that shows well leases faster and at a better rate than raw space with someone else’s failed build-out still standing in it. We do this work specifically so your broker has something to show.

What we build

• Office build-outs and reconfigurations, from a single suite to a full floor.
• Retail and restaurant fit-outs, including the storefront and kitchen work that drives the schedule.
• Medical and professional suites, where the inspection path is longer and needs planning from day one.
• Whitebox, demising and make-ready for suites going back on the market.
• Multi-suite turnover programmes for owners with recurring rollover.

We work across Little Rock, North Little Rock, Conway, Benton, Bryant, Maumelle, Sherwood and Jacksonville.

How we run a landlord job

• Walkthrough and scope. We tour the suite, confirm scope, and flag code and base-building issues before they become change orders.
• Line-item budget against the allowance. You see where every dollar sits relative to the number in the work letter.
• A schedule built backwards from rent commencement, with the long-lead items identified and ordered first.
• One point of contact and a weekly written update, so you can answer your tenant without calling us.
• Punch, final inspection and handover, documented, so substantial completion is not an argument.

Proof, on projects we can actually talk about

Commercial interiors we have built:

• Full interior and exterior remodel of the office and retail building at Jacksonville Mini Storage. A commercial building taken through inside and out in one programme.
• Wealth management office remodel. A professional services suite rebuilt for a client-facing practice.
• Medical office remodel and build-out. The longest inspection path in commercial interiors, planned for from day one.
• Church classroom remodel, in progress.

We have also delivered build-to-rent communities, multifamily renovations including Towne Park Apartments, custom homes, and the Jacksonville Mini Storage facility itself.