Commercial construction includes building to meet the needs of individual businesses and commercial complexes. Retail, offices, hospitality, restaurants, industrial, and medical facilities all fall under the umbrella term of commercial construction. Of course, no two commercial construction projects are the same. Each type of building has different requirements to meet each business’s and its customers’ needs.
What are the different types of commercial construction? What businesses benefit from hiring a commercial construction contractor to build their facilities? Understanding the differences can help you plan for new construction projects in the future.
Different Types of Commercial Construction
While there are many different types of commercial construction projects, there are eight main segments that we’d like to spotlight.
1. Office Buildings
Office buildings range from small one-business offices to glittering glass towers that touch the sky. However, all office buildings share the same interior requirements: rooms for desks, computers, and a lot of technical infrastructure. Modern office buildings have more flexible spaces than traditional fixed wall designs. Modular and adaptive designs for conference rooms, collaboration spaces, and hybrid business models have become popular while still requiring the need for space that can be updated from one business occupant to the next.
Sustainability is also a serious consideration, as there are many ways to reduce the ecological impact of an office building through recycled materials, improved insulation, water conservation, waste reduction, energy-efficient infrastructure, solar power, and beyond.
2. Retail Stores and Shopping Centers
Retail, grocery, and shopping center construction have unique requirements, preparing both an open shopping space for customers and an employee-only space for logistics, warehousing, and back offices. The space must be comfortable and ergonomic, ensuring a smooth flow of traffic for employees, customers, and suppliers alike – often ensuring that each set of operations does not interfere with one another through architectural design.
Retail stores must be modern and inviting in customer-centric spaces, efficient and practical in employee spaces, and safety-focused in areas where deliveries and freight will be handled.
3. Restaurants
Restaurant construction also splits architectural design between front-of-house and back-of-house design. Dining rooms must be luxurious and welcoming to ensure restaurant patrons have a wonderful experience but adaptive enough to be refitted when the restaurant redesigns, remodels, upgrades, or a new restaurant moves in.
Back-of-house includes constructing a commercial kitchen large enough to support the dining area, ergonomically designed for the optimal flow of chefs, servers, and their kitchen support staff. Restaurants also include a large pantry, cold storage construction, and a back office where business matters are conducted.
4. Hotels and Other Lodgings
Hotels, motels, hostels, and corporate housing are all lodging-type commercial construction projects. These involve the creation of individual living quarters, such as hotel rooms or corporate housing apartments which are provided for by building services.
While guest rooms occupy most of a hotel’s construction, the design also typically requires shared public spaces (like pools, lobbies, and spas) along with back-of-house design for laundry, kitchens, and offices, ensuring the hotel or other lodging model runs smoothly.
5. Entertainment Venues
Entertainment venues often feature a stage or activity space, crowd control areas, and back-of-house design. However, every entertainment venue is unique, and these commercial constructions typically require custom design sessions. For example, there is a significant difference between constructing a movie theater and a live performance theater, and there is an even bigger difference between venues like laser tag centers, trampoline parks, and game arcades.
However, these constructions often share a few features, such as a lobby, concession stand, and “main floor” space or spaces where the entertainment takes place.
6. Athletic Structures
Athletic structures like gyms and health clubs require a different type of design. While you can set up workout equipment in any open space, a custom-built gym is usually large, airy, and with spaces designed for specifically organized activities. A large athletic center may designate sports courts (indoor and outdoor), a track, Olympic and diving pools, fitness classrooms, and internal ballet studios in addition to the usual large rooms for workout equipment and men’s/women’s locker rooms, which are common in all athletic facilities.
These athletic facilities are not to be confused with sports stadiums, which are a more specialized and large-scale project type.
7. Industrial and Logistics
Industrial and logistics spaces often begin as a warehouse design. Industrial businesses such as manufacturing require large, sturdy spaces with a lot of utility infrastructure to install specialized machinery. Logistics requires large spaces for emplaced shelving to handle inventory management, order fulfillment, and trucking traffic. Pavement design is almost as important as structural design for constant vehicle management.
8. Medical Facilities
Lastly, medical facilities and bio/life science construction are designed to meet strict regulations while providing an ergonomic and comfortable space for medical staff and their patients. From family practice and medical offices to hospitals and labs that require clean room precision, medical facility construction is always tailored to the purpose of the building.
Gateway Building for Commercial Construction Projects
If you need a new commercial building, Gateway Building has experience with a wide range of industries and many types of commercial property construction. We’ve completed many different commercial projects in RTP and other areas across North Carolina. Contact us today to consult on your business’s unique venue or facility needs.
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