On Friday, I got an email from the leasing agent on the studio space I found about the upfit costs being “expensive” but with NO detail whatsoever about it. So, I emailed him back and said if that was the case, I should probably look into my 2nd choice space. Not an unreasonable statement at all.
Yesterday, I got a call, FINALLY, from the leasing agent. Turns out, the upfit charge is estimated to be $70,000 and they want to build $236.50/month into MY lease to cover it. Of course that doesn’t really “cover” it, but for some reason, I felt like I was TOTALLY getting screwed by this guy. If the same size space was $40k and that was only 1 year ago, how can doing LESS, be $30k MORE?
He tried to tell me that the landlord would like to get additional bids, that he expects will be lower, but he wanted to verify that this amount was ok by me before proceeding. Heck no! That # is NOT ok with me. Especially when I have NO detail to go with it and obviously wasn’t going to be provided any.
So, I told John that I didn’t understand how it could possibly be $70k. He proceeded to say the following….
“Well, you know, we’re trying to work on getting it to be less and your email from yesterday sounded kinda snippy, so if you’re comfortable with this, we’ll try to get that other estimate.”
Snippy? Are you kidding me? 🙄
Ok. That did it. This guy is NOT working for ME. He’s working for “whomever”.
So I passed and told him ‘no thanks’.
Bummer.
But, there is more!
So, I got on the phone/got on the Internet and contacted several other potential locations. There is this one little building, on the same street, but tucked away (or how I think of “tucked away”) that I had my eye on, but the lack of prominence was a factor. Not necessarily bad, but “there”.
The OWNER of the building called me and we chatted and OH MY GOODNESS! Talk about an offer that is EVEN better! This guy was sooo nice too. The space is already upfitted, but he’s going to look into the cost of taking OUT the drop ceiling for me. The space is basically not being used right now — storage — but it is leased, through the end of the year. The folks that are using it will no longer be using it, so I can have it JANUARY 2007! Talk about amazing.
I’m going to go check it out next week. 😀
Woohoo!