Commercial New Construction Electrical Guide for Sarasota Shell and Tenant Spaces | CoHarbor Electric

Commercial electrical work on new construction in Sarasota looks different depending on where you’re sitting in the project. If you’re a developer delivering shell space, your job is to build a building that future tenants can actually use — one that’s code-compliant, properly permitted, and set up to support a range of build-out scenarios without requiring the next contractor to undo everything. If you’re a tenant finishing out a space, you’re starting from whatever that shell gave you and making it work for your specific operation.

Both sides of that equation involve real decisions, real coordination, and real consequences when things don’t get planned well. We’ve done electrical work on both sides of it across Sarasota — commercial builds in the downtown corridor, retail and restaurant spaces in the Palmer Ranch area, medical offices out toward Fruitville Road, mixed-use projects near the Bayfront. The planning mistakes we see most often are avoidable. Here’s how to avoid them.

What a Shell Space Is — and What It Isn’t

A shell building in commercial construction typically means the structure is up, the exterior is complete, and basic utilities are brought to the space — but the interior is unfinished. From an electrical standpoint, that usually means a main service entrance and a distribution panel or panels are in place, emergency and exit lighting is handled at the base building level if required, and some rough-in conduit may or may not be stubbed into individual tenant spaces depending on the developer’s scope.

What a shell doesn’t include is the tenant’s branch circuit wiring, interior lighting, HVAC electrical, data and low-voltage infrastructure, or any of the specialized circuits that a specific tenant’s operation requires. All of that comes in the tenant improvement phase.

The critical question on every shell build is where the developer’s scope ends and the tenant’s scope begins — and whether those two scopes are going to connect cleanly when the time comes. When that line is clearly defined and communicated, tenant build-outs go smoothly. When it’s vague or assumed, there are problems.

Electrical Service Sizing for a Sarasota Commercial Shell

Getting the service size right on a shell building is one of the most consequential early decisions on any commercial new construction project. Size it too small and tenants will run into capacity problems the moment they try to operate. Size it correctly and the building supports whatever comes in without the developer getting a call two years from now about a service upgrade.

Commercial service sizing depends on the building type, the anticipated tenant mix, and the square footage. A multi-tenant retail strip has different demand characteristics than a medical office building or a restaurant pad site. Sarasota’s commercial market has a lot of variety — there are mixed-use projects near downtown where the ground floor might be restaurant or retail and upper floors are office or residential, there are standalone commercial pads in high-traffic corridors, there are business parks out toward Interstate 75 with a mix of light industrial and professional tenants.

Demand Calculations and NEC Article 220

Commercial load calculations follow NEC Article 220, which uses unit load factors per square foot for different occupancy types combined with specific demand factors for known loads like HVAC, kitchen equipment, and signage. An experienced electrical contractor works through this calculation during the design phase, not after the fact.

For a multi-tenant shell in Sarasota, we typically see 3-phase service in the 400-amp to 1200-amp range depending on building size and anticipated use. Restaurants and medical tenants drive load requirements up significantly — a full-service restaurant kitchen can draw 200 amps or more by itself. If the building is being marketed to food and beverage tenants, the service needs to reflect that.

The cost difference between sizing the service correctly on day one versus upgrading it after the fact is significant. The utility company involvement, the new service entrance equipment, the coordination with Sarasota’s permitting process — a service upgrade on an occupied building is expensive and disruptive. The conversation about service sizing needs to happen before the permit application, not after.

Panel and Distribution Planning in Shell Buildings

In a multi-tenant commercial building, the electrical distribution system is the backbone that everything else connects to. Getting it right involves more than just picking a panel size — it involves thinking through how tenant metering works, where distribution equipment lives, and how future flexibility gets preserved.

Tenant Metering

Most multi-tenant commercial buildings in Florida meter each tenant space separately so tenants pay for their own power consumption. That means either individual meters at the main service entrance with a meter stack, or submeter equipment at individual tenant panels. The utility company — in Sarasota that’s typically FPL — has specific requirements for meter installation that need to be coordinated early in the design process.

Getting this wrong or figuring it out late causes real problems. We’ve seen projects where the electrical engineer’s drawings didn’t align with FPL’s current metering requirements and the whole service entrance design had to be revised after the permit was already submitted. Early coordination with the utility saves time on both ends.

Distribution Panel Locations

In a multi-tenant building, distribution equipment — the main switchboard or distribution panel that feeds individual tenant panels — typically lives in a common electrical room. That room needs to be sized correctly, accessible for maintenance, and located to minimize the length of feeder runs to tenant spaces.

Feeder runs from the distribution panel to each tenant’s panel should be planned with the tenant’s eventual load in mind, not just the minimum. Running a larger conduit during shell construction — even if the wire being pulled initially is sized for a lighter load — gives the building flexibility to serve a tenant with heavier electrical needs without having to repull feeder conduit through finished conditions.

Shell Rough-In: What Good Looks Like

On a well-executed shell build, the electrical rough-in gives tenants a clean starting point. Here’s what that actually means in practice.

Service entrance and metering are complete and inspected. The main service is energized or ready to energize. Individual tenant meter sockets are in place and FPL-ready.

Tenant panels are installed, labeled, and fed with properly sized conductors from the distribution equipment. The panels have adequate capacity for the tenant’s anticipated load — not just enough breaker spaces for the minimum code-required circuits, but realistic headroom for a real commercial tenant to operate.

Conduit stub-outs into each tenant space for branch circuit wiring, data conduit, and any specialized systems the tenant is likely to need. How much of this the developer does varies by project, but at minimum there should be clear pathways — sleeves through firewalls, stub-outs at the ceiling, accessible conduit entries — so the tenant’s electrician isn’t drilling through finished structure.

Base building systems — corridor and common area lighting, exit and emergency lighting, fire alarm infrastructure if required, exterior lighting — are complete, permitted, and passing inspection.

What we see go wrong most often on shell builds is the panel sizing and the conduit stub-outs. Developers sometimes try to minimize upfront cost by installing smaller panels or skipping the conduit stub-outs, and it costs more in the end when tenants discover the limitations.

Tenant Improvement Electrical: Starting the Build-Out Right

Once a tenant signs a lease and construction begins on their space, the electrical scope is driven by two things: what the tenant needs to operate, and what the shell gave them to start with.

The first thing we do on any tenant improvement job is evaluate the existing conditions. What’s the panel capacity? What’s actually in the panel — are there available breaker spaces, or is it already full? Where are the conduit stub-outs and what size are they? Is the emergency lighting system base-building or does the tenant need to provide their own? What does the fire alarm infrastructure look like and what coordination is needed for the tenant’s space?

That evaluation tells us whether we’re working with a well-planned shell or one where we’re going to be solving problems before we can actually start the build-out.

Lighting Plans for Commercial Tenant Spaces

Commercial interior lighting in Sarasota falls under Florida’s energy code — Title 24 isn’t Florida’s code, but the Florida Building Code energy provisions are substantive and lighting power density requirements are real constraints on design. LED lighting throughout is now essentially universal in commercial new construction, both because of energy code and because the lifecycle economics are straightforward.

Office spaces, retail, medical, restaurant — each has different lighting requirements and a different design approach. Office lighting needs to meet illumination levels for task work while controlling glare. Retail lighting needs to make merchandise look good. Medical offices have specific requirements for exam rooms. Restaurants and hospitality spaces are balancing functional illumination with the atmosphere the operator is trying to create.

Lighting control also matters under Florida’s energy code. Occupancy sensors in spaces that aren’t continuously occupied, daylight controls near perimeter glazing in larger spaces, time scheduling for spaces with predictable hours — these aren’t optional on a commercial build, they’re code compliance requirements.

HVAC Electrical Coordination

HVAC electrical is one of the most significant portions of the tenant improvement electrical scope, and it requires close coordination with the mechanical contractor. Each HVAC unit — whether it’s a rooftop package unit, a split system, or a VRF system — needs a dedicated circuit sized for the equipment’s nameplate, a disconnect within sight of the unit, and proper overcurrent protection.

In Sarasota’s climate, HVAC loads are substantial. A commercial tenant space in Southwest Florida isn’t running their A/C seasonally — it’s running essentially year-round. Getting the HVAC electrical right, with properly sized conductors and disconnects and service factor accounted for in the load calculation, matters for system performance and longevity.

Data and Low-Voltage Infrastructure

Data and low-voltage systems — network cabling, phone, security, access control, audio/visual — are typically a separate scope from the licensed electrical contractor’s work, but they need to be coordinated. Conduit pathways, outlet box locations, power for access control and security equipment, dedicated circuits for server rooms or telecom closets — all of that touches the electrical scope.

The telecommunications room or IT closet, if the tenant has one, needs a dedicated circuit for the UPS, dedicated circuits for network equipment, and proper grounding for the telecom equipment. Getting the grounding right on a commercial telecom installation is something that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves until there are noise or interference problems later.

Permits and Inspections in Sarasota County

Commercial electrical permits in Sarasota County go through the Building Department, and the inspection process for commercial new construction has multiple stages — rough-in inspection before walls close, service inspection coordinated with FPL, final inspection before the certificate of occupancy is issued.

Sarasota’s commercial permitting process for new construction moves at a pace that’s tied to plan review workload, which has historically been significant given the amount of development activity in the area. Getting complete and correct drawings into the permit application — electrical drawings that accurately reflect the installation and are stamped by the engineer of record where required — avoids the revision requests that delay plan review approval.

The electrical contractor’s license matters here too. Commercial electrical work in Florida requires a licensed electrical contractor, and the permit is pulled in the contractor’s name. On tenant improvement projects, some property owners try to use unlicensed individuals to do electrical work to save money. That creates permit and inspection problems that end up costing more to resolve than the money saved.

What Sarasota’s Commercial Market Means for Planning

Sarasota’s commercial real estate market has specific characteristics that affect how electrical systems need to be planned. The city’s growth corridor along US-41 and the activity around the Fruitville Road and Cattlemen Road corridors, the mixed-use development near downtown and the Bayfront, the professional and medical office concentration along Tamiami Trail — different submarkets have different tenant profiles, and those profiles affect load requirements.

The coastal location matters for outdoor electrical components on commercial buildings — salt air corrosion on service entrance equipment, exterior lighting fixtures, and rooftop equipment is a real factor. Specifying the right enclosures, using corrosion-resistant hardware, and thinking about the maintenance access for equipment that’s going to be in a coastal environment extends the service life of electrical systems significantly.

Talk to Coharbor Electric Early in Your Project

Whether you’re a developer working through the shell design or a tenant starting a build-out, the electrical conversation is worth having early. Getting the service sizing right, making sure the shell scope sets the tenant up for success, and building out a tenant space that’s code-compliant and ready to support real operations — all of that is easier to get right when the planning starts before the permit application.

Coharbor Electric works on commercial new construction and tenant improvement projects throughout Sarasota and across Southwest Florida. We know the local permitting process, we know the market, and we know how to deliver commercial electrical work that holds up and serves the building and its tenants well for the long run.

Give us a call or reach out through our website to talk through your project. The earlier in the process, the better.