This step exists to ask a question nobody wants to ask out loud: should you rebuild here at all. Not because the answer is usually no, but because the answer is sometimes no, and the businesses that are hurt worst are the ones that spent eighteen months and every dollar they had rebuilding into a situation that had already changed.

Doing this properly also makes everything downstream easier. A lender, a landlord and a contractor all ask the same five questions, and having the answers written down is the difference between being taken seriously and being told to come back when you know your numbers.

You need your settlement figure, or your best estimate of it, and at least one real contractor estimate rather than a guess. Rebuilding to current code costs more than the building that burned, and that difference is usually the number that decides this.

Read your lease before anything else if you do not own the premises. Many commercial leases contain a destruction or casualty clause giving the landlord, the tenant, or both, the right to terminate when the premises are substantially destroyed, and setting out who rebuilds what. Which applies to you is in your lease. This clause can decide the question for you, so read it before you plan anything. Not yet confirmed by LAEDC.