South Florida · Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach
Commercial build-outs, priced before you sign the lease
Tenant improvements and commercial renovations across South Florida. We walk the space, test it against the base building, and give you a line-item number with every assumption written down — while you still have leverage in the allowance negotiation.
Send a floor plan, a lease exhibit, or a landlord work letter. We come back with a real number and the assumptions behind it.
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
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Home counties on this desk: Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.
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Principals run the firm. There is no account-manager layer between you and them.
Self-perform
Dewatering, support of excavation and deep foundations we do with our own people.
Why us
Why owners hire this desk
One desk, one point of accountability, and a real construction number before you commit to a lease.
We build in buildings that are still open
Most commercial work here is not an empty shell. It is a floor above a working tenant, a suite next to a trading desk, or a dining room that has to serve on Friday. We phase, we work the hours the landlord allows, and we protect the path from the dock to your door.
A budget before you sign the lease
Send us the space and the landlord work letter before the LOI is final. We will price the build-out and name the assumptions, so you negotiate the tenant improvement allowance knowing the real number instead of finding it after you are committed.
Self-perform site engineering
Dewatering, support of excavation and deep foundations — including tidal sites — are done by our own crews, not brokered out. Very few Florida general contractors can say that. When a build-out turns into a structural or below-grade problem, it does not become somebody else’s schedule.
An institutional record behind the field team
Our leadership has delivered Hospital for Special Surgery’s FDR expansion, Emigrant Savings Bank fit-outs, the ADL tenant renovation in New York, and deep foundations at 1515 Surf Avenue. That is leadership experience, not a Romco Builders project list — and we will always say which is which.
Core Services
What we build
A complete commercial capability — from preconstruction and design coordination through self-perform execution and turnover.
Tenant Improvements
You have signed, or are about to sign, a lease on space that does not yet fit how your business works. Between you and occupancy sit a landlord work letter, a design team, a building department, and a landlord’s rules about when you are allowed to make noise.
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Commercial Renovations
The building works. It is simply the wrong shape for what you now do in it, or it has aged past what your tenants will accept. Renovating a building that is still operating is a different discipline from building an empty one, and it is where most schedules come apart.
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Office Build-Outs
An office build-out is judged on two things nobody sees in the drawings: whether the mechanical system can actually condition the layout your architect drew, and whether it is finished in time for the move you have already scheduled.
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Medical & Dental Build-Outs
A clinical space is not an office with a sink. It is a permit with a second regulator attached, a mechanical design driven by air-change requirements, and a set of inspections that a general commercial contractor does not routinely see.
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Restaurant Build-Outs
A restaurant build-out is a mechanical and utility project wearing a finishes project’s clothes. The dining room is the part everyone discusses and the smallest part of the risk. The hood, the make-up air, the grease waste and the incoming service are what decide whether you open.
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Retail & Showroom Build-Outs
Retail construction answers to two clients at once. Yours, and the landlord’s design criteria manual — a document that governs your storefront, your signage, your lighting levels and often the contractor you are allowed to use for anything that touches the base building.
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Preconstruction Services
Every expensive surprise on a commercial project was knowable earlier. Preconstruction is the deliberate act of going looking for those surprises while the only cost of finding one is a redrawn detail.
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Construction Management
Some owners do not need a lump-sum contractor. They need a professional team on their side of the table — running the design consultants and the trades, controlling cost and schedule, and reporting to them in numbers they can actually audit.
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Track Record
The record, stated accurately
Romco Builders is a full-service general contractor headquartered in Fort Lauderdale and licensed in the state of Florida. Four principals run the firm: Luke Corona, Terrence Kehayas, Wes Romani and Lisa Vanderbunt.
Our leadership has delivered the Hospital for Special Surgery FDR expansion, multiple floor fit-outs and a chiller project for Emigrant Savings Bank, the ADL tenant renovation in New York, the United Nations “Arc of the Return”, and deep foundations in a tidal environment at 1515 Surf Avenue. That work was largely delivered in New York, before and alongside Romco Builders.
We draw that line deliberately, and we will keep drawing it. It is leadership experience, not a Romco Builders company project list, and a contractor who blurs the two is telling you something about how they will handle the rest of the truth on your job.
What is unambiguously ours is the self-perform capability: dewatering, support of excavation and deep foundations executed by our own crews. Very few Florida general contractors can say that, and on a South Florida site with a high water table it is the difference between a problem we solve and a problem we hand to somebody else’s schedule.
Alternatives
How we compare — including where we lose
Design-Build vs. Design-Bid-Build
Design-bid-build finishes the drawings, then puts them out to competitive bid. Design-build brings the contractor in during design. Both are legitimate. They fail in different ways, and the right choice depends on how firm your scope already is.
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Us vs. the Landlord’s Preferred Contractor
Most South Florida landlords have a contractor they suggest, and some leases require one for specific scopes. That is not a scam — it exists for real reasons — but it is worth understanding whose interests the arrangement is built around.
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Local GC vs. a National Rollout Contractor
If you are a brand opening locations in several states, a national rollout firm is a reasonable answer. If your locations are in Florida, the calculation changes — because the thing that actually delays a build-out here is jurisdictional, and jurisdictions are local.
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Hiring a GC vs. Managing the Subs Yourself
Contracting the trades directly removes the general contractor’s fee, and on a small, simple job that can be the right decision. What it does not remove is the work the general contractor was doing — it transfers that work, and the risk attached to it, to you.
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A Licensed GC vs. an Unlicensed Crew
There is always a crew that will do it cheaper and start on Monday. On residential handyman work that is often fine. On permitted commercial work in a leased building, the exposure sits with you, not with them — and that is the part worth being clear about.
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Renovating vs. Renewing the Lease As-Is
The alternative most owners actually choose is to do nothing — renew the lease, keep the space as it is, and spend the money elsewhere. Sometimes that is exactly right. It is worth being honest about when it is not.
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Areas Served
Building in 18 South Florida markets
Every market below has its own page, because the thing that delays a build-out in this region is almost never framing. It is jurisdictional — a Coral Gables Board of Architects calendar, a Miami Beach preservation review, an airspace check in Dania Beach, a Miami 21 transect question in Brickell.
FAQ
Common questions
- What kind of commercial work do you take?
- Tenant improvements, commercial renovations, and office, medical, restaurant and retail build-outs across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. This is the commercial desk of Romco Builders. Luxury residential and multifamily development are handled by different teams, because they are different buyers with different needs.
- How early should we bring you in?
- Before the lease is signed, if you can. A tenant improvement allowance is negotiated once, and negotiating it against a real construction number instead of a broker estimate is worth more than anything we can do for you after the lease is executed.
- Are you licensed where our building is?
- Romco Builders is licensed to build in the state of Florida. This site covers our home market — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — but a rollout beyond it does not need a different general contractor in each city.
- Can you build while we keep operating?
- Almost always, and it is most of what we do. Phased construction, temporary rated partitions, off-hours demolition, a maintained path of egress, and a fire alarm that stays in service throughout. We price the phasing premium as its own line rather than burying it in the trade costs.
- Will you guarantee a completion date?
- We give you a schedule with named milestones, the dependencies each one rests on, and a weekly variance report against the baseline. We do not guarantee a date, because plan review comments, utility connections and inspector availability are outside any contractor’s control. A contractor who guarantees one is guessing.
- Did Romco build the Pierre Hotel and the Hospital for Special Surgery?
- No, and we will not let that impression stand. Those projects — along with Emigrant Savings Bank, the ADL tenant renovation, the United Nations “Arc of the Return” and 1515 Surf Avenue — were delivered by our leadership, largely in New York, before and alongside Romco Builders. It is leadership experience, and it is real. It is not a Romco Builders company project list.
Service area
Where we work
- Counties covered
- Broward · Miami-Dade · Palm Beach · Collier · Lee · Monroe · Martin · St. Lucie18 markets have their own page.
- Office hours
- Mon–Fri 10:00 AM – 6:00 PMWeekends by appointment. Night and phased work scheduled around your operating hours.
- Phone
- (954) 807-3208
Read our Google reviews — worth a look before you let anyone on your building.
No showroom, and that is deliberate
Romco is a service-area contractor. There is no trade counter to visit, because the work happens at your building rather than at ours.
Outside the immediate Broward and Palm Beach corridor we work through established local trade partners and manage the project ourselves. You deal with one point of accountability either way — the crew on site changes, the person answering for the job does not.
For anything urgent, call(954) 807-3208 rather than using the form. We would rather look at it than quote it blind.
Next step
Ready to price your project?
Send a floor plan, a lease exhibit, or a landlord work letter. We come back with a real number and the assumptions behind it.