Independent ground-floor retail advisory

A storefront is only dead until someone plans it right.

Same space, two outcomes. The difference usually isn't the neighborhood or the market — it's whether the ground floor was built to be leased.

See how we help Let's talk

$150M+in retail leased 5 yearsin New York

Leased Vacant

⟺ Drag it — watch the same space go from dead to thriving.

IndependentWe work only for you — no competing agendas, your outcome is the whole job.

On the drawingsWe fix the ground floor before the concrete, while it's still a markup.

One partnerFeasibility to signed lease — one team accountable for the retail, start to finish.

Why it matters

The gap between those two windows is bigger than it looks.

Retail is a sliver of the income and an outsized share of the risk. When it's an afterthought, the bill shows up in places you weren't looking — and some of it can't be undone.

1Space that won't lease. Wrong depth, low ceilings, no venting or gas — quietly disqualifying the tenants who'd pay the most.
2Six-figure retrofits for something that would have been a markup on the drawings.
3Rent capped below what the space could command, for the life of the lease.
4Renters upstairs reading a dark storefront as a building that's failing.
5Empty glass that invites loitering and dents the whole address.
6A vacancy on every tour, every appraisal, every refinance.

How we help

Wherever your project is, there's a right time to get the retail right.

Four ways to work together — pick the one that matches where you are, from controlling the site to a space that's already sitting empty.

Before you buy

Step 01 · highest leverage

Retail feasibility & highest-and-best-use

What the ground floor should be: the right tenant categories for the trade area, realistic rent ranges, and the base-building requirements each use will demand — before a single line hardens.

While it's on the drawings

Step 02 · our signature service

Base-building retail design review

The one thing no one else on the project is doing for you — not your architect, not your GC: reading the drawings for leasability — ceiling heights, venting and gas, electrical, frontage, column grid, demising, loading and trash — before the concrete's poured. You get a prioritized punch list ranked by cost-to-fix-now versus never.

Before you go to market

Step 03 · lease-up

Merchandising & lease-up strategy

The target tenant mix and co-tenancy logic, a demising plan tied to real tenant sizes, the white-box and TI spec, an achievable rent schedule, and a plan to run the local leasing effort.

If it's already empty

Step 04 · repositioning

Vacant space repositioning

Sitting on dark space? A straight diagnosis of why it isn't leasing, and a concrete plan to reposition and fill it.

Why us

Why bring in an independent partner.

We work only for you, and only on the retail. On most projects the ground floor is an afterthought — figured out late, after the box is already built, when the expensive mistakes are locked in. We're in the drawings before the concrete, while the ground floor is still a markup.

Our playbook was built in New York retail — where a few feet of frontage is the difference between a signed lease and a dark window.

That discipline travels. Most developers outside the big coastal markets have never had access to it.

The track record

Five years getting ground-floor retail leased in New York.

For roughly five years, reading ground floors for leasability — and getting them filled — has been core to how we work in New York, the most competitive retail market in the country. It adds up to more than $150 million in leased space — a discipline proven on real deals, not a consulting theory.

That track record is the edge. It's the caliber of retail thinking most developers outside the big coastal cities have never had on their side of the table — and we bring it to your drawings, before the concrete.

We keep the practice deliberately small, working with a handful of developers at a time — so the read you get is direct, and what you learn stays yours.

Let's talk

Got a project with ground-floor retail?

Tell us where it is and what stage it's at. If there's a fit, we'll set up a short call to walk through the opportunities and the risks in your space.

Prefer to just write? Reach us directly:

hello@frontageadvisory.com

No pitch, no obligation — just a straight read on your ground floor.

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