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Berkeley, California

Never occupied, but built with a food tenant in mind.

An expanding food and beverage operator was considering a ground-floor retail suite beside a building's main entrance on Berkeley Way. The space had never been occupied, and at first glance there was nothing in it: no lighting, no power, no restrooms. The brand needed to know how far a fit-out would have to start from zero. One visit, and the record drawings read on site, showed the shell had been planned for a food tenant from the start.

~1,500

Square feet

17'-9"

Floor to deck

126

Photos taken

1

Site visit

Berkeley, California - commercial site surveyed by Alturascope

First-generation retail shell in an office building · Berkeley, CA · Surveyed August 2026

What We Found

What the space had to offer, and what the format needed.

01

A tall, bright, empty room with glass on two sides.

The suite is about 45 by 37 feet under an exposed concrete waffle deck nearly 18 feet up, with tall double-glazed windows to the street, clerestory glazing above, and a glazed wall onto the building lobby. The polished concrete floor is flat and good enough to keep as a finished floor. Nothing has to be stripped out before work starts.

What we recommended

Use the height and the lobby glazing in the layout, and treat the polished slab as a finish rather than something to cover.

Empty retail shell with tall storefront windows, clerestory glazing and a polished concrete floor
The storefront wall from inside the shell.

02

Water, waste, air and heat were all capped and waiting.

Labeled heating hot water and domestic cold water run through the space, with valved copper stubs and a capped supply-air trunk. The record drawings, photographed on site, show a 2-inch cold water stub for future retail, which beats the brand's 1½-inch standard, a capped 3-inch vent and waste provision, supply air balanced to 600 CFM, and make-up air and exhaust louver provisions in the envelope.

What we recommended

Design the plumbing and ventilation around the provisions already there, and confirm stub locations and sizes on site as the first step of design.

Insulated pipes labeled heating hot return, heating hot supply and domestic cold water beside a capped supply-air duct
Labeled heating and cold water runs beside the capped supply-air trunk.

03

A clean tenant panel on the wall. The allocation behind it was the one question left.

In the rear service area sits a 150 A, 208 V tenant panel with all 42 spaces still blanked off. What the panel lacked was paperwork: how much of the building's capacity is set aside for this suite was not recorded on site. The suite next door gave a clear template, with a 480 V feed through a 112.5 kVA transformer to a 400 A board.

What we recommended

Ask the landlord to confirm the feed to the panel and the capacity reserved for the suite, using the neighboring setup as the reference, before sizing any equipment.

Open grey tenant electrical panel with all branch spaces blanked and a 150 A main breaker
The unused 150 A tenant panel.

Pre-lease survey of a first-generation retail shell in Berkeley, California

This was a pre-lease site survey and MEP due diligence of a never-occupied, first-generation retail shell on the ground floor of a 2018 building on Berkeley Way, carried out for a hospitality brand. In one visit we measured the space, documented every capped service stub and label, opened the tenant panel, followed the water service back to the building entry and read the base-building record drawings on site. The result was an existing-conditions record that tied what is physically in the shell to what the building was designed to give it.

The record drawings also show a 3-inch gas provision to the future retail spaces, which the brand does not need but which adds to the suite's value. Building restrooms and showers sit directly behind the rear wall, so drainage runs are short.

Delivered

The client received a narrative report, a register of every service provision found in the shell, and the full photo record organized by system.

Related services

Anonymised by design. The street is named and nothing else: no occupier, suite, client or lease details. Photographs are cropped to keep tenants’ branding out of frame.

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Know what a space can do for you.

One visit, before the lease, and you know how a space fits your format: what it already gives you and what the fit-out has to add.

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