Maintaining Storefronts Through Puget Sound Weather

By Gary E. Wilson, President & Designated Broker, Wilson Management, Inc.

The storefront is the part of a retail property a customer evaluates before deciding whether to go in. It is also the part most exposed to this region's weather, and the part where deferred maintenance shows fastest.

That combination makes storefront upkeep a trading issue rather than a housekeeping one. A center whose frontages look tired does not merely need work — it is losing footfall to somewhere that looks maintained, and every tenant in it feels that.

This covers the specific components, what this climate does to them, and the seasonal rhythm that keeps them right.

Glazing and the seals around it

Storefront glazing is the largest single visual element and the one where problems are most visible.

Seals and gaskets around glazing panels degrade under ultraviolet exposure and constant wetting. Their failure produces water ingress at the perimeter, which shows up as staining on interior finishes and, in framed systems, as corrosion inside the frame where nobody can see it.

Failed double-glazed units fog permanently between the panes. There is no cleaning that fixes it, and a fogged panel in a storefront reads as neglect from across the parking lot.

Frame condition — aluminium frames in a wet marine-influenced climate corrode at joints and fixings, particularly on exposed elevations.

Cleaning frequency matters more here than in drier regions. Rain carries road film and organic matter onto glass continuously through the wet months, and a storefront cleaned on a summer schedule looks dirty from November onward.

Entry doors and matting

The entry is the highest-wear point in a retail property and the place where weather comes indoors.

• Door closers and pivots take enormous cycle counts and drift out of adjustment, producing doors that slam, stick, or fail to latch
• Weather seals at the threshold and jambs, which control both water and heat loss
• Automatic door sensors and safety beams, where fitted, need testing rather than assuming
• Thresholds wear and become trip hazards, and they are also an accessibility consideration
• Matting is a genuine safety item in this climate — wet floors immediately inside an entry are the most common slip location in any retail property, and adequate matting length is the control

Matting deserves emphasis because it is cheap and frequently under-specified. A short mat inside a busy entry in November does not absorb what people bring in, and the resulting wet floor is both a hazard and a claim.

Awnings, canopies and covered walkways

These do real work in this climate, keeping customers dry between the parking lot and the door, and they are frequently the most neglected element of a frontage.

• Fabric awnings accumulate organic growth on their upper surfaces and lose color unevenly. A stained, sagging awning is worse than none.
• Frames corrode at fixings, and failure is a safety matter rather than a cosmetic one
• Drainage — canopies shed water somewhere, and where that somewhere is the middle of a walkway, customers walk through it
• Lighting integrated into canopies fails and gets left, which darkens the entry precisely where light is most useful

Signage

Signage is the element tenants care most about and landlords control most tightly, which makes its condition a recurring point of friction.

• Illumination — partially lit signage is worse than unlit signage, because it reads as broken rather than as closed
• Face condition — acrylic faces yellow and craze under ultraviolet exposure
• Fixings and structural condition, particularly on projecting and monument signage
• Vacant unit signage — a departed tenant's sign left in place tells every visitor the center has a vacancy it has not filled
• Directory and wayfinding accuracy, which drifts as tenants change

Removing a departed tenant's signage promptly is one of the cheapest improvements available to a center with a vacancy. See Vacancy and Lease-Up.

Hard surfaces at the frontage

• Paving and walkway surfaces immediately in front of units, where trip hazards matter most
• Pressure washing — frontage concrete accumulates staining, gum and organic growth continuously here, and a cleaned frontage transforms how a unit reads
• Kerbs and edges, which take vehicle contact
• Bollards and protection, where vehicles park nose-in toward glazing
• Drainage at the frontage, since ponding at an entry is both unpleasant and a slip risk

The seasonal rhythm

Late summer to early autumn

• Full frontage inspection — glazing, seals, frames, doors, awnings, signage
• Awning and canopy cleaning, with drainage checked
• Pressure washing of frontages and walkways
• Sealant and glazing perimeter repairs while conditions allow
• Lighting audit ahead of the dark months, with every failed lamp replaced
• Matting reviewed and replaced before the wet season

Through winter

• Increased glass cleaning frequency
• Matting monitored and replaced as it saturates
• Entry slip hazards watched during heavy rain
• Post-storm checks on awnings, signage and any loose fixings
• Lighting failures replaced promptly rather than batched

Spring

• Moss and algae treatment on frontages, canopies and paving
• Post-season inspection of seals and frames
• Repairs identified over winter, scheduled for the dry months

Summer

• Painting, sealant replacement and any glazing work
• Signage refurbishment
• Larger frontage works while weather allows

Where responsibility sits

A recurring source of dispute, and the answer is in the lease rather than in convention.

Typically the landlord maintains the structure, the common areas and the base building elements, while the tenant maintains its own storefront installation, signage and the interior of its premises. But the boundary varies — some leases put the entire storefront on the tenant, others retain glazing with the landlord.

The elements that generate arguments are predictable: glazing within a tenant's frontage, the tenant's own signage on a landlord-owned fascia, entry doors, and the awning above a tenant's unit.

Establishing this from the lease before a failure — rather than during one, with a tenant whose customers are walking past a broken door — avoids the pattern where the landlord repairs it to keep the center trading and then argues about payment from a weak position.

Why this matters commercially

Retail is the one asset class where the landlord's maintenance decisions directly affect tenants' revenue.

A customer deciding between two centers is comparing what they can see: whether the lighting works, whether the frontages look cared for, whether the entry is clean and dry. Neither center's lease terms enter into it.

That makes frontage condition part of the product every tenant is paying for, and it is why deferring visible maintenance in a retail center costs more than the same deferral would cost elsewhere. The tenants notice, and so do their customers.

A frontage walk worth doing monthly

Most of what degrades a frontage is visible to anyone who walks it deliberately, and almost none of it gets reported by tenants — who see their own unit every day and stop noticing.

Walk the center from the customer's approach, at the times customers actually arrive, and look at:

• Every light, including those in canopies and signage. Partial illumination is the single most common visible fault
• Every pane of glass — fogged units, cracked panes, failed seals showing as staining
• Every entry door — does it close properly, latch, and open without effort?
• Matting — is it adequate for the season and is it saturated?
• Awnings — staining, sagging, drainage discharging where people walk
• Signage — illuminated, intact, and belonging to a tenant who is still there
• Frontage surfaces — staining, gum, moss, trip hazards
• Vacant units — glass clean, lighting on, previous branding removed

Doing it after dark once a quarter is worth more than doing it three times in daylight, because lighting faults and dark corners are invisible at midday and are exactly what a customer arriving at 5pm in December experiences.

Take photographs on the walk. A record of frontage condition over time turns a subjective impression into evidence — useful when a tenant disputes responsibility for their storefront, and useful when deciding whether a center needs a refurbishment program or simply a season of catch-up maintenance.

Where to go next

Our Retail Common Area Management page covers parking, lighting and the wider site, and Retail Tenant Improvements covers storefront design criteria for new fit-outs.

For the full service, see Retail Property Management, or contact us.