EXPANSION STRATEGY
How Accurate Site Selection Early Can Save You a Fortune Later
Published Dec 17, 2025 · 6–8 minute read
The real cost isn’t the bad site—it’s everything after
Site selection mistakes rarely show up as a single obvious failure. They show up as compounding costs: delayed openings, change orders, lost leasing momentum, underperforming demand, and leadership churn.
Three expensive failure categories
- Permitting and entitlement risk: timeline slips, redesigns, public pushback.
- Infrastructure surprises: utilities capacity, stormwater, access changes, ROW constraints.
- Demand and competition shifts: trade area misreads, cannibalization, new entrants.
What defensible analysis prevents
When you document assumptions, validate feasibility, and run sensitivity tests, you catch problems while they are still cheap. That’s the ROI: not “perfect prediction,” but fewer irreversible commitments.