What actually happens when you take over a commercial space
A business owner leases an existing suite, plans to open in a few weeks, and then finds out that a Certificate of Occupancy is required for all businesses in San Antonio, and that no building or structure can be used or occupied until Development Services has issued one. In a multi-tenant building, each tenant space needs its own.
The next question decides the cost of the whole project: is the use changing from the previous tenant? If it is not, the City can often update the existing Certificate. If it is, you may need a new one. A retail suite becoming a restaurant is the classic version, and it usually gets discovered after the lease is signed.
Your landlord may hand you something. Often it is a leasing brochure, a marketing plan with no dimensions, or a drawing from three tenants ago that no longer matches the walls that are actually standing. That is the gap this service fills.
The document people buy by mistake
Most owners arrive having been told they need a floor plan. The Certificate of Occupancy application itself does not name one. What it names, over and over, is a Parking Site Plan, required for a long list of business types including food and drink establishments when the use is changing.
Floor plans are real and commonly needed, but they usually belong to the building permit and plan review side of a project rather than to the occupancy application. Knowing which document your situation actually calls for, before you pay for one, is the first thing we sort out.
If you sell food or drink, note that a Health Inspection is also a named required item, with its own separate timeline. That is a frequent reason an application sits waiting with nothing visibly wrong.
What we do
We visit the property, capture the existing conditions, and prepare clean documentation of the space as it actually exists today. Then we help you organize what gets submitted and respond if comments come back.
Before any of that, we review the specific requirements for your project. Occupancy requirements are not one-size-fits-all. They depend on the use, the building, the existing conditions and the authority having jurisdiction, so we confirm what applies to your situation before quoting or drawing anything.
When the answer is not us
Sometimes a project turns out to need a licensed professional. A change of occupancy classification, significant construction, structural work or certain life-safety systems can push a project past what we are permitted to do.
When we see that, we tell you up front, before you have paid us for work we cannot finish. Finding out early is cheaper than finding out at review.
What you may receive
Actual deliverables depend on the project scope and what the reviewing authority requests.
- Existing floor plan drawn to scale
- Room labels and space use
- Overall and room dimensions
- Door locations and swing
- Restroom locations and fixture layout
- Exit locations
- Existing conditions documentation
- Basic occupancy information
- Permit documentation prepared within our scope