Our Services

About Us

Get a Quote

This help desk is intended for discussion purposes only. Neither BOMA, its chapters, affiliates, or Extreme Measures Inc.® are responsible for the information, comments or opinions expressed herein. For complete information, please refer to the official publications of the standards themselves.

Help Desk Contents: Q&A Forum Home; BOMA Office Standards Overview; BOMA Industrial Standards Overview; BOMA Retail Standards Overview; BOMA Multi-Family & Hospitality Standards Overview; BOMA Mixed-Use Overview; BOMA Gross Areas Overview; IPMS: All Buildings Standard Overview; Alternative Measurement Methods; Where to Get Measurement Standards Publications; What are As-Built Drawings?; CAD, BIM & Digital Twins; Resolving Area Disputes Between Tenants and Landlords; Glossary of Industry Terms

Forum Categories BOMA 2024 - Office Buildings Question

Retail space in Office Buildings

Susan: SWD; December 9, 2025

What is the best way to handle Retail Space on the 1st floor of a High Rise Office Building? The building is 95% Office. The Retail spaces have street entrances and a common service corridor but no direct public access to the Building Lobby. Typically leasing does not want to gross up Retail with a common area factor. Do we cap the factor for the Retail areas and lose RSF? Use Inter-Allocation and load only some areas to Retail Areas? or Use the Mixed Use standard which will yield a similar result to Inter-Allocation?

David Fingret: Extreme Measures Inc.; December 9, 2025

Hi Susan,

The BOMA 2017 and BOMA 2024 Office Standards offer quite a bit of flexibility in this situation. All of your solutions are possible, but we wouldn't recommend applying the Mixed-Use Standard to an Office Building. We would normally utilize Inter-Allocated Area calculations to target those Retail tenants with only the Service and Amenity Areas that apply to them. If no load factor is to be applied to the Retail tenants, then you could cap it to zero. Another option is to apply the BOMA Office Standard to the entire building (including the retail areas) and then apply just the Retail Standard to the retail portion(s) of the building.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
David

Help Desk Contents