We build your first US stores to the standard you set at home.

There is no single national building code

Although every US jurisdiction adopts some version of the International Building Code as a starting point, each city and county then amends it to suit local life-safety, accessibility, energy, electrical and plumbing priorities, with the result that NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Miami-Dade each enforce a materially different rulebook on a retail tenant improvement; a construction document set that passes plan check in Dallas will almost certainly need to be reworked before it passes in NYC, and a brand operating in five US cities should expect to maintain a slightly different specification per city.

Permit lead times that can span weeks to most of a year

On the faster end, an Alt-2 retail tenant improvement permit filed with NYC's Department of Buildings will typically clear in four to eight weeks per DOB Guard's published data, while an Alt-1 with structural or use-change scope will more often run eight to sixteen weeks; on the slower end, a standard tenant improvement filing with the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety will typically run four to six months per the published guidance from Razi Architects, which means the store-opening calendar for any program touching more than one US city needs to be sequenced around the slowest jurisdiction rather than the fastest one.

Work letters that quietly move cost onto the tenant

US landlord work letters very commonly shift scope onto the tenant — base-building MEP capacity upgrades, ADA path-of-travel work in common areas, life-safety modifications, signage rights, even minor structural reinforcement — in clauses buried in the exhibits to the lease rather than in the headline TI allowance number, and an international operator without a US construction adviser in the room before lease signing will frequently discover six figures of unbudgeted scope only after the contract is in place.

TI allowances that are negotiable in principle and rarely understood in practice

Tyler Cauble's 2026 Nashville benchmarks place specialty retail TI allowances at $10–$30 per square foot for second-generation space and $40–$80 per square foot for first-generation space; in our experience the more important question than the headline allowance is what the allowance is allowed to be spent on, since architect fees, permit fees, soft costs, expediter fees and brand-required AV are all common exclusions that turn an apparently generous TI deal into one that covers only a fraction of the actual buildout once the cost-to-complete schedule is built out properly.

Trade procurement is regional rather than national

There is no meaningful national subcontractor market for retail MEP, millwork, finishes, signage or specialty install, and so what a national GC actually delivers in each city is its local trade bench in that city — which means the value of the firm you select is determined far more by the quality and depth of its bench in your target markets than by the size of its corporate office or the breadth of its claimed coverage map.

A scope written for international expansion, not retrofit from a domestic playbook.

Your stores look like your stores. In US materials.

The visual standard you built at home — carpets, joinery timbers, lighting, brass detail, stone, ceiling treatment — rarely sources one-for-one in the US. A standards document tells your contractor what the brand looks like. It does not tell them where to find it in Houston.

We work through the substitution list with you and your designer — material by material, finish by finish — until every line item has a US-sourced equivalent that meets the brand standard and meets a defensible price.

By store three on most programs, the brand has a pre-vetted US sourcing list that travels with the rollout. New locations move from blank sheet to construction documents in weeks, not months.

This is the work we did for Cullen Jewellery across San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston and Toronto.

EB3 Construction's August 2025 benchmark put the national retail store model average at approximately $214.35 per square foot, with New York at $294.43/SF and Chicago at $274.51/SF. Razi Architects' Los Angeles range for retail and restaurant TI is $150 to $450+/SF, with soft costs adding 20–30%.

Cushman & Wakefield's 2025 US Retail Fit Out Cost Guide is the gold-standard reference and we cite it on every preconstruction package.

• →Market — NYC and LA carry a 30–60% premium over national average
• →Square footage — small footprint stores have a higher $/SF because of fixed costs
• →MEP scope — kitchens, fitting rooms, supplemental HVAC, brand-required lighting
• →Millwork specification — custom fixture programs typically 25–40% of total cost
• →Site condition — first-generation white-box vs second-generation TI

We are good at delivery. We say no to everything else.

Most US GC websites won't tell you what they don't do. We will. The fastest way to build trust is to be honest about the edges of the scope.