Commercial renovation & refresh
Grandview Contractors renovates offices, hotels, lobbies, storefronts, and occupied commercial spaces across Salt Lake County and Utah County under a Utah DOPL B100 general contractor license. One team scopes the work, pulls the permits, and sequences every trade around your hours of operation.
When a commercial renovation is the right call
Commercial renovation is for owners and operators updating space they already hold — not fitting out a new lease. If you’re a new tenant building to a work letter, that’s our tenant improvement work. If your building works but looks and functions like the year it was finished, you’re on this page.
The usual triggers: a hotel flag hands down a property improvement plan with a deadline attached. An office that emptied out in the remote-work years needs to earn commutes again. A lobby is dating a building that’s otherwise competitive. A storefront reads “closed” from the street even when it isn’t. Or a lease renewal negotiation hinges on visible reinvestment.
What makes commercial renovation its own discipline is that the building rarely empties for you. Tenants keep working, guests keep sleeping, customers keep walking in. So the plan has to answer questions a residential remodel never asks: which zones close in which order, what happens after hours, how dust and noise stay out of occupied suites, and how the fire and life-safety systems stay live through every phase. We see dependencies before they become delays.
Commercial renovation services we offer
Each renovation type below gets its own scope logic — but all of them run through the same discipline: defined scope before demolition, permits before schedule promises, changes in writing.
Office refresh & modernization
Finishes, lighting, layout, and amenity upgrades that make an older office compete with newer inventory — without a full gut.
ExploreHotel & PIP renovations
Property improvement plans and guest-room renovations executed floor by floor, keeping the rest of the property selling rooms.
ExploreLobby & common-area renovations
Entries, corridors, elevator lobbies, and shared amenities — the square footage every visitor and tenant judges the building by.
ExploreFacade & storefront renovation
Storefront systems, entrances, cladding, and signage-ready exteriors that hold up to Utah sun, wind, and freeze-thaw.
ExploreOccupied-space phased renovations
Zone-by-zone sequencing, after-hours work, and containment plans that let your business keep operating through construction.
ExploreHow we run a commercial renovation
- Understand. Walk-through, existing drawings if they exist, and your operating constraints — hours, tenants, brand standards, deadlines like a PIP date or lease event.
- Define. A written scope that separates must-do (code, life safety, failing systems) from should-do (finishes, layout) with a budget range for each. You decide where the line sits.
- Plan. Permits, phasing map, containment plan, and long-lead procurement — storefront systems and light fixtures are ordered before demolition, not after.
- Build. A named point of contact, work zones that close and reopen on the published schedule, and daily coordination with your building manager or front desk.
- Close. Punch list, inspection sign-offs, closeout documents, and as-built notes your facilities team can actually use later.
What Utah buildings add to the scope
Age matters here. A meaningful share of Salt Lake City’s commercial stock — downtown, Sugar House, the Granary — is unreinforced masonry, and any renovation that touches structure in those buildings brings Wasatch fault seismic questions with it: anchorage, connections, and sometimes retrofit scope. We flag that in the first walk-through, not at permit review, so the budget conversation happens while it’s still a conversation.
Exteriors take real punishment along the Wasatch Front. High-elevation UV fades and chalks finishes faster than sea-level product literature suggests, canyon-wind events can gust hard enough to test fastening on cladding and signage, and 100-plus freeze-thaw days a year work on every sealant joint and concrete entry. Facade and storefront scopes get specified for that climate, not a generic one.
Permitting varies by city more than owners expect. Salt Lake City and Provo run mature commercial review processes with predictable rhythms; fast-growth cities like Lehi and Saratoga Springs move fast on some permits and queue on others. Renovations also trigger accessibility upgrades under the ADA in proportion to the work — path of travel, restrooms, entrances — and we scope those triggers up front under current Utah-adopted code. Our B100 license is verifiable at dopl.utah.gov, which is the two-minute check we’d recommend on any contractor bidding your building.
What moves the cost of a commercial renovation?
Four things move the number more than anything else. First, how much stays: a finishes-and-lighting refresh is a different budget class than a renovation that relocates walls, restrooms, or mechanical systems. Second, occupancy: working nights and phases around live tenants adds labor and duration, and it’s usually still cheaper than the revenue lost to closing. Third, the building’s age: pre-1980 structures bring hazardous-material surveys, undocumented conditions, and sometimes seismic scope. Fourth, code triggers: accessibility, egress, and energy upgrades scale with how much of the building you touch.
We give a ballpark planning range at consultation — clearly labeled as a planning number, not a promise — then a real estimate once scope is defined and the building has been opened up where it needs to be. If the renovation conversation grows into new square footage or a ground-up question, our commercial construction team runs those numbers alongside the renovation so you can compare honestly. And when the driver is a specific tenant program — a restaurant or retail build-out inside your building — those scopes have their own pages and their own logic.
Questions we actually get
Can you renovate while our business stays open?
Yes — most of our commercial renovations happen in occupied buildings. We phase the work in zones, build dust and sound containment between active and construction areas, schedule loud or disruptive tasks after hours, and keep life-safety systems live throughout. You get the phasing map before work starts, so your team can plan around it.
What’s the difference between a renovation and a tenant improvement?
A tenant improvement fits out space for a new or renewing tenant, usually under a lease work letter. A commercial renovation updates space you already own or operate — a lobby, a hotel, your own offices, a facade. The construction overlaps; the contracts, approvals, and schedule drivers are different, so we scope them differently.
Will a renovation trigger ADA or code upgrades in our building?
Often, in proportion to the work. Renovations commonly trigger accessibility improvements along the path of travel to the altered area, and altered spaces must meet current Utah-adopted code even if the rest of the building predates it. We identify those triggers during scoping so they’re priced in the estimate, not discovered at inspection.
What drives commercial renovation costs up in older Salt Lake buildings?
Three usual suspects: hazardous-material abatement in pre-1980 buildings, undocumented conditions behind walls and above ceilings, and seismic considerations in unreinforced masonry structures. None of them are reasons not to renovate — but all three are reasons to scope with the building open in a few representative places before anyone signs a fixed price.
Related services
Commercial renovation sits inside our broader renovation and build-out work. New-tenant fit-outs run through tenant improvements, ground-up questions through commercial construction, and ongoing building upkeep through our repair and property services team.
Tell us what you’re working on
We reply within a couple of hours during business hours — a day at most. You’ll get a straight read on scope, sequence, and budget before anyone commits to anything.