Hello,

We have building which was previously occupied as a bank. We have completely gutted the building and renovated it. We decided to leave the vault in place because it was too expensive to remove. Our architect's renderings treated the vault as a separate room within the unit and thus provided us with an estimate of square footage for the unit (which did not include the area of the vault) and then a separate estimate for the vault. We have just had the space measured by a local surveying firm and they simply measured the space as if the vault did not exist. Given the thickness of the vault's walls, this measurement resulted in a higher useable square footage number than we had originally estimated. I’m anticipating some push back from the tenant on this space given that the walls around the vault are so thick and it could be argued that that space is not really useable for this tenant. Would it be possible to measure the vault separately to the inside of the walls? Have you encountered a scenario like this before? The estimate that we gave the tenant was much lower than what the measurement has come in at and I’m wondering if that’s because the architect’s renderings treated the vault as a separate room. Please let me know if you have encountered this type of situation before and what your recommendation would be.

Many thanks,
-Kristen