A facilities decision is a leadership decision before it is ever a real estate decision. This is how founding school leaders make those decisions wisely — under pressure, uncertainty, and the weight of a mission.
Before the spreadsheets, the site tours, and the lease terms, founding leaders need a mental model. These three principles shape every decision that follows.
You are the leader of a startup. You are the CEO, CFO, CMO, CAO, and COO of every phase. Affordability is not a single moment — it is iterative, and you must own the financial model. Build a trusted facilities team, but know that you are where the buck stops.
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."Maya Angelou
A facility is often the largest financial decision a school will ever make — typically 10% to a maximum of 15% of the total operating budget. Stay grounded in reality at all times. Strong leaders help their teams face hard truths before they become crises.
"What we cannot imagine cannot come into being."bell hooks
The Project itself is the Queen Bee — and the hive is the school community. Every team member, including you, keeps the health of the Project on a pedestal. With every decision, ask one question: will this support the health of the Project?
"What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee."Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
The same facility looks different depending on who is evaluating it. Strong founding teams deliberately run every major decision through all four lenses — because the lens you skip is usually the one that comes back to hurt you. Select a lens to see how it interrogates a decision.
A permanent school development typically takes 18 to 36 months. A renovation runs 8 to 12+ months depending on scope and permitting. Knowing the phases is how you plan early — and avoid being surprised by the forks in the road.
Define the school you are trying to build. Forecast enrollment, set the budget envelope, and program your space needs before you fall in love with a building.
Validate zoning, utilities, access, and risk before you are committed. This is where the wrong site reveals itself — if you look.
Design discipline lives here — costs and scope are negotiated against reality.
Ranges from a "summer slam" renovation to extensive site work and new construction. The schedule meets the world.
Plan for total project cost: hard costs (the building itself) plus soft costs (permitting, utility-connection fees, design, and other fees), which together typically split somewhere between 75/25 and 70/30. Many owner's reps overlook the soft costs — and the gap surfaces too late.
Then carry a contingency. Every project meets the unforeseen, so we recommend setting aside roughly 10%. Renovations especially: until you open the walls and floors, you can't be certain what's behind them.
There is no single right way to occupy a building. Most founding schools travel along a spectrum — incubating in temporary space, proving the model, and only later affording a permanent home. Each pathway trades capital, control, flexibility, and permanence differently.
Lease or sub-lease temporary space — often in a church, community, or district/educational building — to grow for 2–5 years before you can afford a permanent home. The landlord may handle renovations in exchange for future rent.
Lease a space and grow into the building as enrollment rises and your balance sheet strengthens. Terms can run short for flexibility early on, or long once you're ready to put down roots.
Negotiate the right to purchase the building later at a set price, with a portion of your rent credited toward the eventual purchase — a bridge from leasing to ownership.
Bring in a developer to acquire, finance, or build the facility, and grow into it over time. In a turnkey structure the developer buys and improves the building and the school pays rent; a fee developer may front predevelopment and soft costs until your financing closes. It trades upfront capital and control for capacity and speed you don't have to build in-house.
Own the asset outright — by acquiring and renovating an existing building, or building a purpose-built home from the ground up. The most permanent path, and the most capital-intensive.
One pattern holds across the spectrum: the further you move toward ownership and construction, the more capital, complexity, and risk a path carries — and the more a seasoned owner's representative earns their keep, keeping every decision pointed at the Project.
Two facilities scenarios drawn from the field. Make your calls round by round and watch how risk, budget, and mission alignment shift as the curveballs land. One tests action discipline — the temptation to overbuild. The other tests restraint discipline — the temptation to overreact. Choose a scenario to begin.
3BRE partners with schools at any stage, boards and the organizations that support them — turning the hardest facilities decisions into disciplined, mission-aligned ones. The framework you just used is the same one we bring to our live school clients, board sessions, and advisory engagements.
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