Cost per square foot is the first number almost everyone asks for, and it is genuinely useful, as long as you know what it can and cannot tell you. It is a planning shorthand: total construction cost divided by the building's floor area. Two projects of the same size can land 30 or 40 percent apart on that number for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone doing a bad job, so it pays to understand what is actually inside it.
What Cost Per Square Foot Really Measures
When a builder quotes "about $200 a foot," they are describing the hard cost of construction spread across the enclosed area of the building. It usually covers site work, structure, envelope, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, interior finishes, and the general contractor's overhead and fee. It usually does not cover the things that happen around construction: land, design and engineering fees, permits and impact fees, furniture, your own equipment and signage, financing, and a contingency for the unknown.
That distinction matters. A number that sounds high may already include a full finish-out, while a lower number may be shell only. Before you compare two figures, make sure they are measuring the same scope. A price is only meaningful next to a clear definition of what it buys.
Why It Varies So Much By Building Type
Different buildings do different work, and that work costs different amounts. A warehouse is mostly volume: a slab, a structure, a roof, and a shell, with relatively little inside it. A medical building is the opposite. The same footprint can carry far more plumbing, specialized air handling, medical gas, backup power, lead-lined walls, and hard, cleanable finishes. That is why medical construction sits near the top of the range and a plain warehouse near the bottom.
As a rough map of where things typically land in the Dallas–Fort Worth market, treat every figure below as a ballpark for early planning, not a quote:
- Ground-up office / corporate: roughly $175 to $260 per square foot
- Medical / healthcare: roughly $275 to $450 per square foot
- Retail / restaurant: roughly $175 to $320 per square foot
- Tenant improvement / interior: roughly $55 to $150 per square foot
- Warehouse / flex / industrial: roughly $80 to $160 per square foot
- Core & shell (base building): roughly $130 to $210 per square foot
These are the same ranges behind the calculator on our estimate page. They move with the market, and any real project can fall outside them once its specifics are known.
Use ranges, not single numbers. Early in a project, the honest answer is a spread. If someone hands you one precise figure before there are drawings, treat it with caution. The confidence comes later, when the scope is defined.
What Actually Drives the Number
Within any building type, a handful of factors decide where you land in the range, and sometimes push you past it.
Scope and finishes
This is usually the biggest lever an owner controls. Polished concrete versus stone floors, a basic storefront versus a custom curtain wall, standard casework versus millwork: the shell can be identical while the finish package doubles a room's cost. This is why our estimator carries a finish multiplier, and why "upgraded" and "high-end" are real budget decisions, not just adjectives.
Site and structure
Everything below and around the building can swing the price before the walls go up. Poor soils, rock, a sloped or tight lot, deep utilities, detention ponds, and demolition of what is already there all add cost that never shows up in the finished square footage. Two identical buildings on two different lots are not the same project.
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing
The systems, often shortened to MEP, are a large and variable share of any commercial building. A building with heavy power demand, lots of plumbing fixtures, special ventilation, or redundant systems carries far more here than a simple open-plan office. In medical and restaurant work especially, MEP is often where the money goes.
Schedule and market conditions
Time is a cost. A compressed schedule can mean overtime, extra crews, and premium lead times. Beyond your project, the wider market sets the floor: material prices, subcontractor availability, and how busy the trades are in North Texas all move the baseline. The same building priced in a slow market and a hot one will not carry the same number.
The square-foot figure is where a conversation starts, not where it ends. The value of a builder is turning it into a number you can actually finance and hold.
How a Real Bid Differs From a Ballpark
A per-square-foot estimate is built from averages and history. A real bid is built from your drawings. Once there are plans and specifications, a contractor sends the documents to real subcontractors and suppliers, collects actual pricing for your scope on your site, and assembles it line by line. The result reflects your building, not a category of buildings.
A bid also carries things a ballpark leaves out: general conditions for your specific schedule, insurance and bonds, a defined fee, and an appropriate contingency. That is why the same project can move from a wide planning range to a firm number as the design matures. The estimate did not change because someone was wrong; it changed because the project stopped being a guess.
- A ballpark answers "roughly, can I afford to consider this?"
- A budget estimate answers "what should I plan and finance around?"
- A bid answers "what will you build this for?"
Each step trades a little speed for a lot of certainty. Knowing which one you are looking at keeps you from over-trusting an early number or dismissing a firm one.
How Aghorn Interests Approaches This
We would rather give you a real number a little later than a comforting number that falls apart. Our project estimator gives you the same DFW planning ranges described above so you can pressure-test an idea in a minute, and it is deliberately labeled as a planning tool, not a bid.
When a project is worth pursuing, our preconstruction work is where the ballpark becomes a budget. We sit with your program or early drawings, put real pricing against your scope and your site, and build a schedule and a cost you can take to a lender and hold to. Because we are owner-led, the person pricing the job is the person who builds it, so the number you plan around is the one we stand behind.
If you have a site, a set of drawings, or just an idea and a rough size, tell us about it and we will help you turn a square-foot guess into a plan you can build on.