Storefront & Retail Plaza Cleaning

Entrances, walkways, glass surrounds and the concrete customers actually walk on, cleaned before you open.

A retail entrance is the highest-traffic square footage on any commercial property and the part a customer forms an opinion about before they touch the door. It also collects the specific mess retail generates: black gum spots at the doors, drink spills that go sticky, cigarette tar under the overhang, grease tracked out of the food tenant, and a grey traffic path worn down the middle of the walkway that nobody notices until the edges get cleaned and the difference shows.

The multi-tenant problem

A strip plaza is one building with five to fifteen businesses that each open at a different hour, and it is usually not the tenants who are paying — it is the landlord or the management company. That makes the scheduling the hard part. The work has to fit into the window when the plaza is closed or nearly so, which in a typical Michigan plaza with a coffee tenant at one end and a bar at the other can be a narrow few hours. It also has to not soak the entrance of a tenant who is about to open. Sequencing the run so each unit is dry before its own opening time is most of the skill.

What actually gets cleaned

The concrete walkway the full length of the run, and the entrance aprons, which are always worse than the walkway. The kick plates and the glass surrounds and frames, where the grime line at hand height is the thing people see. Under the awnings and soffits, where spider webbing and dirt collect out of the rain. The bollards, the trash enclosures and the ashtrays. The curb line and the first few feet of the parking apron at each entrance, because a clean walkway against a filthy curb reads as unfinished.

Why this is the one to do first

If you own or manage a plaza and you are going to spend on exterior cleaning once this year, the entrance run is where it shows. The back elevation matters to nobody but you. The walkway is in front of every customer of every tenant, every day, and it is also the part a prospective tenant walks before they sign. It is a small area, it is fast, and it is the highest-visibility money on the property.

The evidence for this one

Their own photographs include a multi-tenant retail plaza — a run of national and local tenants under one roof — with the sidewalk visibly wet from having just been cleaned and their wash rig sitting in the truck bed in the foreground. And "Make Your Store Front Shine" is not our line: it is the headline on the commercial ad they made themselves.

Text a photo, get a straight answer

The fastest way to get a useful answer on a commercial property is a photograph of the problem. Send one and Chris can usually tell you what it is, whether it needs pressure or chemistry, and whether it is worth doing before anybody visits.

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Their own words for this service: “Make Your Store Front Shine”

Their own photographs of this work

Every caption here was written after looking at the photograph.

A multi-tenant retail plaza with the walkway and entrance aprons freshly washed — the concrete is still wet — and their pressure-wash rig, tank and hose reel in the bed of the truck in the foreground.

Questions about storefronts & retail

Can you work before we open?

Yes, and for retail that is usually the only way it works. Give the earliest access time and the opening time of the earliest tenant and the run gets sequenced around them so no unit is wet when it opens.

We manage the plaza but the tenants complain to us. Who do you coordinate with?

Whoever you tell us to. If you want the tenants notified, say so and when — a day of the week and a time window is enough for most tenants to move their sandwich boards and patio furniture. If you would rather they hear it from you, we will work to your notice.

Does gum come off concrete?

The black flattened spots at an entrance are gum, and getting them off concrete properly is a specific step rather than part of a general wash. Point them out at the quote so the job is priced with them in it — a walkway wash that leaves every gum spot behind is the most common complaint about this kind of work.

How often should a retail entrance be cleaned?

Most plaza entrances want it twice a year in Michigan — once after the salt season ends in spring, which is the important one, and once in autumn. A busy food or drink tenant at the door can justify quarterly on that unit alone.