Commercial Landscaping in Evanston & Chicago's North Shore

Who this is for

Condominium and townhome associations, single-owner commercial property, office and retail sites, and the property managers who run them. The work is the same craft as our residential projects — stone, iron, timber, planting, lighting, drainage — but the buying process is different, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time.

A homeowner decides at the kitchen table. A board decides at a meeting, from a packet, against two other proposals, with a budget that was set last autumn. That is a different document, not a different standard of work.

On commercial property, the liability lives at the entrance

The Illinois Snow and Ice Removal Act, 745 ILCS 75, protects residential owners and their contractors from ordinary negligence claims over icy sidewalks. It does not extend to commercial property. Commercial owners are left with the ordinary rules — generally no duty over a natural accumulation, but genuine exposure for an unnatural one, and an unnatural accumulation is usually something a design or a maintenance decision created.

So the details that matter most on a commercial site are the unglamorous ones. Where the downspouts discharge. Whether the walk to the accessible entrance sits below the parking island that drains onto it. Whether a settled paver at a door threshold has become a trip edge. Whether there is anywhere to put snow that is not uphill of the front door. We look at those first and the planting plan second.

This is general information about how the rules work rather than legal advice — your association's counsel and insurer should review your own circumstances.

Written so a board can actually compare it

Most association landscape bids cannot be compared, because each contractor scoped something different. We write the specification first — quantities, materials by name and finish, base depths, drawings — and then price it. If the board wants competing numbers, the other bidders can price the same document, which is the only way a comparison means anything.

We also phase. A master plan drawn once and built across three budget years costs less in total than three unrelated projects, and it gives the board something to put in front of owners. Capital work funded from reserves and routine work funded from the operating budget are separated in the proposal, because those are two different votes.

The firm that drew it is the firm that built it

Our masonry, ironwork and carpentry are self-performed. On commercial work that matters more than it does on a private garden, because the site keeps operating while the work happens and because the association will still own the result in fifteen years. There is no gap between the drawing and the crew, and no argument later about whose scope a failure belonged to.

It also means the same firm can hold the property through the winter. Snow and ice management is written against the site we already know — the grades, the drainage, the surfaces we installed, and where the snow can go without ending up across an entrance.