Multi-Tenant Office Cleaning in Norwalk: Common Areas, Suites or Both

Who cleans what in a Norwalk multi-tenant office building?

The lease decides, and the usual split is common areas for the landlord and suites for each tenant. If you manage the building, your job is the shared spaces. If you rent a suite, check whether your lease includes cleaning inside it before you assume it does.

Norwalk's shared office buildings range from big corporate floors to small suites above shops. There are corporate floors at the Merritt 7 office park beside its own Danbury Branch station, two- and three-story professional buildings with a shared hallway along Main Avenue, Westport Avenue and Connecticut Avenue, and small offices above the shops on Washington Street in SoNo. We cover all of them from Fairfield, a short run down I-95, and our Norwalk service area page lists what we do in the city.

Way Beyond Cleaning is an owner-run cleaning company, and multi-tenant buildings and shared workspaces are part of the recurring janitorial work we take on.

Which cleaning setup fits your building?

Four setups come up most often. The right one depends on how many tenants you have, what the leases say and how often people move in and out.

If leases leave suite cleaning to the tenants

Split contracts are a common setup and they work fine, as long as the boundary is clear. The building's cleaner does the lobby, hallways and shared restrooms. Each tenant hires for its own space. Problems start at the edges, like a restroom inside a suite that the building's cleaner thought was the tenant's, or a shared kitchen nobody has claimed.

If the building contract covers everything

One contract for the whole building is easier to manage, because there's one schedule, one set of keys and one number to call. It needs a scope that names every suite and what's included in each, because tenants will judge the cleaner by their own space, not by the lobby.

If you have a few tenants in a small building

Say you have a three-story building with four or five tenants. Separate cleaners for every door can mean a lot of different vendors coming through one entrance. A shared cleaner with a split scope is often simpler, with the landlord paying for the common areas and each tenant who opts in paying for its own suite.

If tenants are moving in or out

Turnover is when the common areas take a beating and an empty suite needs a one-time clean before the next tenant arrives. We do both recurring janitorial and one-time commercial cleans, so one company can handle the regular schedule and the turnover clean.

What belongs in the common-area scope?

Write the common areas down room by room, so nothing gets missed and nothing gets paid for twice. A shared-area scope may include the reception area and entryways, the hallways, the shared restrooms, any shared kitchen or break room, the floors and carpets, trash and liner replacement, high-touch points, dusting of accessible surfaces, and interior glass.

Carpeted corridors are worth a note in the scope. Commercial carpet tends to wear first in the paths people walk most, and one carpet cleaner's service page explains how commercial carpet wears in traffic lanes if your hallways are starting to show it.

How often should the common areas be cleaned?

More often than the quietest suite, in most buildings. A lobby and a shared restroom get traffic from every tenant, so they usually need more visits than a suite with a handful of people in it. We plan schedules around building use, foot traffic, business hours, budget, priority areas and changes in occupancy, and that can be daily, several times a week, weekly or a custom mix. Our guide to commercial cleaning contracts goes further on writing frequency into a scope.

Can the building be cleaned after the tenants leave?

In many cases, yes. It depends on the property, on access and on what the work involves. In a managed office building, the property manager often sets the rules for outside vendors, including which door to use, which hours are allowed and who signs in. The cleaning plan has to fit those rules first, and then it can fit around the tenants.

What should a tenant check before hiring its own suite cleaner?

Start with the lease. If suite cleaning is yours, settle which rooms are in and which are out, who restocks paper towels and soap, how the cleaner gets into the building, and who you call when something is missed. Our office cleaning in Norwalk page covers what a suite visit can include.

On price, recurring office cleaning starts at $150 per visit for a smaller office. A larger suite, more visits or a bigger scope moves that up, and our office cleaning cost guide explains what sets the number.

Who handles multi-tenant office cleaning in Norwalk?

Way Beyond Cleaning does, and we clean shared buildings across Fairfield County and Westchester County too. We're owner-run by Rich, and you can read more about how we work on our about page. Estimates are free, and the proposal comes in writing.

If you manage a building, tell us which areas are shared and how many tenants you have. If you're a tenant, tell us what your lease says about cleaning. Either way, you can send us the details or call, and we'll come back with a free estimate.