Plan: Planning and Real Estate Development Consulting
The best way to develop the right real estate project is to ground the project in a strategic assessment of space and programs. Thoughtful planning can anticipate potential pitfalls, husband limited resources, and avoid costly and organizationally-risky real estate decisions. It puts the organization in a position to be intelligently opportunistic, and provides unified support for leadership.
Denham Wolf's Planning Services Fall Into Two Categories:- Assessing a specific opportunity or issue facing an organization
- Evaluating a future development
Assessing a Specific Real Estate Situation or Opportunity
Denham Wolf's services can focus on a specific real estate issue, from deciding how to
handle an impending lease expiration to restarting a stalled negotiation.
We work with the client's space needs and provide real estate analyses and targeted
interventions to address these needs.
- Developing financial analyses of actual or prototype spaces in the marketplace to inform decision-making
- Evaluating the current market to compare sites given an organization's preferred location, design considerations, cost constraints and other factors
- Negotiating with landlords and developers regarding potential opportunities or when difficultly arises in a real estate transaction
Evaluating a Future Development
Denham Wolf's planning process, known as Scenario Development, is a strategic planning tool built around real estate and its impact on an organization's development.
Scenario Development galvanizes momentum for a project, builds consensus among stakeholders and defines the real estate strategy that the organization will pursue. It develops common expectations and goals throughout the organization.
In our scenario development process, Denham Wolf facilitates planning meetings for a variety of organizational audiences. Together, we:
- Assess the client's physical, financial and organizational needs, through an intensive process of interviewing and document and data analysis. Where an organization has already completed a strategic planning process, we modify the scope of our planning work accordingly.
- Analyze space needs based on mission, staff and programs; short and long-term growth plans, types and volume of activity, changing programs, and the types and layout of spaces that flow from all of these.
- Assess real estate needs: types of buildings and style, capital costs and cash flow assessment for buy vs. rent; location requirements (target populations, transportation, etc.), mission–driven evaluation criteria.
- Develop real estate alternatives, using our "three–legged stool" model — looking at the physical, financial and organizational dimensions of the proposed undertaking and determine whether or not the organization wants to proceed with a project.
