Context
Renovation Wranglers buys and renovates historic buildings in downtown Bryan, Texas, and develops housing and offices in the same district. Its work runs from restoring and reselling older houses through to ground-up mixed-use projects, and the business presents itself around a single idea: bringing the downtown back to life by remodeling what is already standing and filling it with residents and independent businesses. It speaks to three audiences at once, prospective commercial tenants looking at downtown space, residents considering the district, and investors weighing a development project.
At the time of the engagement the business was recruiting tenants into the district while moving from renovation work into ground-up development. Bryan sits within driving distance of several of the largest cities in Texas and next to a large university, and the surrounding region was drawing steady interest from people and businesses relocating. Downtown revitalization was an active subject in comparable districts across Texas and the country, several of which published their own state-of-downtown reports, and the client wanted that kind of evidence to put in front of businesses considering a second or third location.
Challenge
Renovation Wranglers renovates historic buildings and develops housing and offices in downtown Bryan, with the aim of drawing new businesses and residents into the district. To recruit commercial tenants it needed a data-backed way to present the downtown to prospective businesses, a clearer picture of which kinds of businesses to pursue and how to reach them, and a financial model it could use to underwrite ground-up development projects before taking them to investors. The brief was broad: a marketing package built around a state-of-downtown report, a leasing template that could cover any property in the district, a study of how to find and attract second and third locations of independently run retailers and restaurants, and an underwriting spreadsheet built for ground-up development rather than for acquisition. Every piece had to stay editable by the client after the semester ended.
How the team worked
The engagement started from a brief the client had already sketched: a marketing package for prospective commercial tenants built around a state-of-downtown report, a study of how to find and attract second and third locations of independently run retailers and restaurants, and a spreadsheet for underwriting development projects. The team split the work into three streams, met weekly among themselves, and reviewed progress with the client in bi-weekly meetings, drawing on the client's background information and detailed feedback at each one.
For the brochure, the team studied published state-of-downtown reports from other cities and a commercial leasing flyer as references, drew the district boundary and pulled demographic, traffic, and business-mix data through ArcGIS Business Analyst, and designed both the report and the brokerage template in Canva so the client could edit them directly. The template was kept deliberately minimal, with a filled example alongside the blank one, so a site-specific leasing package could be produced without design help.
For the target market, the team turned the client's description of an ideal tenant into criteria that could be checked one business at a time, researched real candidates against them, and built a weighted scoring tool so the criteria could be reweighted rather than argued. The team then extended the brief with a website comparison against other developers and a search visibility audit, on the reasoning that a stronger digital presence would feed the tenant pipeline over the long term.
For the underwriting model, the team first researched real estate financial modeling, the ground-up development process, property development strategies, financing, and the return metrics investors expect, then built the spreadsheet in Excel with clearly marked input and output cells, tabs for cash flow, rental profit and loss, and exit strategy, and a recorded video guide so the tool would stay usable for someone unfamiliar with real estate and finance terms.
Workstreams
- Built a State of Downtown Bryan report, using ArcGIS Business Analyst to define the district and assemble demographic, traffic, and business-mix data, and designed it in Canva as a marketing brochure for prospective tenants.
- Designed a minimal, easy-to-update brokerage template in Canva, with a filled example, so the business could produce a site-specific leasing package for any downtown property.
- Ran a SWOT analysis and defined target-market criteria for the businesses the client wanted downtown: locally rooted concepts with one or two successful locations, based within driving distance of Bryan, screened on social following, home-city size, and customer reviews.
- Researched example businesses that fit the criteria and built a weighted Business Value Evaluator in Excel that scores a candidate on each criterion using weights the user can adjust.
- Compared the client's website against five real estate developers across Texas and the country, audited its search visibility with Semrush, and wrote website and SEO recommendations with a step-by-step implementation guide covering analytics setup, keyword research, content, and backlink building.
- Developed an underwriting spreadsheet for ground-up development that takes acquisition, construction, design, and development costs, rent, operating expenses, and financing as inputs, compares three market scenarios side by side, reports the standard return metrics, and comes with a recorded video walkthrough.
What the team found
- Published state-of-downtown reports from comparable districts followed a consistent shape: define the district first, then present demographics, traffic, and business mix in one place a prospective tenant can read quickly.
- The client's qualitative picture of an ideal tenant, locally rooted and already experienced at running a location, translated cleanly into measurable criteria, which made candidate businesses comparable to one another.
- Because consistent size data exists for food businesses and not for entertainment concepts, the scoring tool ranks restaurants and cafes well and would need new inputs before it could compare other categories.
- Reviewing developer websites across Texas and the country surfaced the same recurring elements: a portfolio of completed projects, a purpose statement placed high on the home page, a map-based property search, and press coverage linked for credibility.
- Across the developers reviewed, search traffic arrived mostly through branded searches for the company name rather than through generic property terms, and the sites with more referring domains drew more monthly visits.
- Modeling one project under favorable and unfavorable conditions showed how costs and revenues move against each other, which is what separates a project that survives a downturn from one that only works in good conditions.
What the client received
- State of Downtown Bryan report, with editable design file and the underlying data sheet
- Brokerage leasing template, blank and filled example, editable by the client
- SWOT analysis, target-market criteria, and research on candidate businesses that fit them
- Business Value Evaluator scoring tool in Excel with user-adjustable weights
- Website comparison against real estate developers across Texas and the country
- Search visibility audit with a step-by-step implementation guide
- Ground-up development underwriting spreadsheet with market scenario comparison
- Recorded video walkthrough of the underwriting spreadsheet
Outcome
Renovation Wranglers now has a marketing package it can hand to prospective commercial tenants, a leasing template it can refill for each property, a defined tenant profile and a scoring tool for deciding which businesses to approach, a written path for improving its website and search presence, and an underwriting model it can use to test a ground-up development under different market conditions before taking it to investors. Each piece was built to be edited by the client, and the underwriting model came with a walkthrough so it stays usable by someone outside finance.
Recommendations
- Start with readability on the website: widen the color palette so key information can be emphasized, and increase font size and contrast so the content carries at a glance.
- Add a portfolio page showing completed and current projects, and a page written for investors alongside the existing pages for residents and businesses.
- Register the office location on mapping services and restructure each page so a short purpose statement sits at the top, with the home page carrying the portfolio, the mission, and current listings.
- Add a map-based search for available listings and a news page linking press coverage, which builds credibility with prospective tenants and adds inbound links at the same time.
- Set up web analytics before anything else in search, so there is a baseline to measure later changes against, and post to the blog on a regular schedule once keywords are chosen.
- Choose a small set of long-tail keywords, write in-depth content around them with a hook drawn from the business's own story, and pursue backlinks through broken-link outreach and original images.
Next steps
- The client was handed the State of Downtown Bryan report and the brokerage template as editable design files, with the underlying data sheet, so both can be refreshed and refilled for any downtown property.
- The client was handed a step-by-step search implementation guide sequenced from analytics setup to keyword selection, content writing, and backlink building.
- The client was handed the Business Value Evaluator with adjustable weights, so the criteria can be retuned as the tenant profile changes.
- The client was handed the underwriting spreadsheet with marked input and output cells and a recorded video walkthrough covering each tab.