Hendrickson Insurance
Hendrickson Insurance
Hendrickson Insurance writes strip mall insurance for strip center, retail plaza and neighborhood shopping center owners, and for the property managers who run them, across Sarasota, Bradenton, Tampa and St. Petersburg. Dennis Hendrickson managed shopping centers before he wrote a policy, so the program is built around how a Florida plaza actually earns and fails: the roof, the rent roll, the parking lot, the named storm deductible, and the lease language that decides who pays when a tenant burns a unit. Building, loss of rents, premises liability, ordinance or law, equipment breakdown, wind, commercial flood and umbrella, quoted against real admitted and E&S markets.
Office, flex or warehouse landlords: the lessor's risk insurance in Florida guide covers buildings that are not retail.
Strip mall insurance, also called shopping center insurance or lessor’s risk, is the package a Florida plaza owner carries on a multi-tenant retail building: commercial property on the building at replacement cost, loss of rents, premises liability for the parking lot and common areas, ordinance or law, equipment breakdown, wind with a named storm deductible, a separate flood policy, and a commercial umbrella. In Florida the premium is driven by roof age, distance to the coast, tenant mix, vacancy and loss history, and those same five things decide whether the plaza places with an admitted carrier or in the excess and surplus market. Hendrickson Insurance in Sarasota writes it for single centers and multi-plaza portfolios on the Gulf Coast, from an agent who managed shopping centers before he sold insurance.
A strip mall insurance policy is a package, not a single form. Most owners who get hurt at claim time had a policy; they had a policy with one of these eight pieces missing or set too low. Here is what a complete Florida strip center program looks like.
Replacement cost on the shell, roof, canopies, pylon signs, parking lot and site improvements. Insured to replacement value, not the county tax value, which is usually a third to half of what it costs to rebuild in Sarasota or Tampa today. The coinsurance clause gets handled so a partial loss does not get shaved. How the coinsurance trap works on a plaza.
Business income for a landlord is rent. If a fire or storm empties six units for eight months, this pays the rent roll and the extra expense of keeping tenants. Twelve months minimum, longer for coastal plazas where rebuilding permits take time.
General liability for the parking lot, sidewalks, lighting and common areas. One million per occurrence and two million aggregate is the floor. Why cameras are now part of this coverage.
Hurricane coverage with a percentage deductible on the building value. This one number decides whether a storm is a bad month or a bad decade. Covered in detail below.
Separate policy, always. NFIP primary because it does not non-renew after a claim, private or Lloyd’s only as excess above the NFIP maximum. Commercial flood for Gulf Coast plazas.
Older plazas rebuilt after a loss have to meet current code: wind loads, fire separation, ADA, drainage. Without this coverage the upgrade cost is yours. On a 1980s center this can be a six-figure gap.
Rooftop HVAC units, electrical panels and the backflow assembly are the things that fail on a strip center. Mechanical breakdown is excluded from the property form and has to be added. Backflow and water compliance on retail sites.
Excess liability above the GL, usually 5 million and up for an owner with more than one property or real personal assets. Cheap relative to the limits. Commercial umbrella.
Every Florida strip mall insurance quote is really a decision about which market will take the building. Clean plazas go admitted at a good rate. Everything else goes to excess and surplus lines at a worse one, or gets declined. These are the eight things the underwriter looks at before the rate is even calculated.
The single biggest factor on the Gulf Coast. A flat roof past fifteen years closes most admitted markets. A membrane or metal roof under ten years with permits opens them. A new roof is the one capital project that pays for itself in premium.
Restaurants with hoods, bars, nail salons, vape shops, fitness studios with late hours, daycares, auto repair and dry cleaners load the rate or get a plaza declined. A dentist, a medical office, a mattress store and a phone repair shop do not. The rent roll is an underwriting document.
Over about 20 to 30 percent vacant and the plaza reads as unwatched: fire, vandalism and water damage nobody catches. Carriers load it, add a vacancy clause, or walk. Leasing is an insurance strategy. What actually fills units.
A plaza on US 41 in Sarasota and one on SR 70 east of I-75 are different risks to every carrier. Barrier island and bayfront retail is E&S territory for wind. The wind mitigation report is the document that argues your case.
Masonry and concrete block rate better than frame. Sprinklers, monitored alarms, a hydrant on site and a close fire station all move the protection class in your favor. Parking lot lighting matters for the liability side.
One water claim is a conversation. Three is a market change. Owners who handle small losses out of pocket and keep the runs clean stay in the admitted market through the hard cycle.
The bank wants replacement cost, a named storm deductible it can live with, flood in a high hazard zone, and its name on the policy. Finding out the deductible is too high for the lender the week before closing is avoidable.
Cast iron drain lines, Federal Pacific or Zinsco panels, and rooftop units past their life are the questions that come after the roof. Document what was replaced and when. A permit history is worth more than a promise.
Plaza owners across Sarasota, Manatee, Pinellas and Hillsborough are opening the same two letters this year. The first is a non-renewal from a carrier that wrote Florida strip centers for decades. Dennis got one of those letters himself. Old Dominion, the Main Street America group’s Florida commercial company, non-renewed all of the property coverage on a shopping center he ran, with no loss to point to. Carriers that wrote plazas here for years are leaving the state, and Old Dominion is not the only one. Florida law gives a commercial property owner 45 days’ notice, and 45 days is often exactly what you get.
The second letter says the agency you have used for fifteen years has been acquired. The name on the door is now a national broker or a private equity roll-up, your agent has a new title or has left, and the person answering the phone has never seen your plaza. What agency consolidation is doing to Florida commercial clients.
If either letter is on your desk, this is what happens next. Send the rent roll, dec pages, loss runs and roof information listed below. Dennis rates the plaza against the admitted and E&S markets still writing Gulf Coast retail, tells you within a day or two which market you are in and roughly what it costs, and gets the replacement bound before the old policy expires so the lender never sees a gap. He answers his own phone and reads his own applications. Nobody has bought him.
Who this is built for. This agency is built for owners of a real center or several of them: the accounts where the program runs from the tens of thousands to several hundred thousand dollars a year in premium and the structure matters more than the shopping. A single small building with a three thousand dollar policy is well served by an online BOP, and Dennis will say so on the first call rather than waste your time or his. Portfolio owners with a statement of values, a layered property program, a blanket limit across plazas, or a lender with opinions are exactly the work he wants.
Every strip mall insurance policy on the Gulf Coast carries a separate deductible for named storms, quoted as a percentage of the building limit, not a flat dollar amount. On a plaza insured for 2 million dollars, the difference between the options is not subtle.
| Named storm deductible | Out of pocket on a $2,000,000 plaza | What a $250,000 roof claim pays |
|---|---|---|
| 2 percent | $40,000 | $210,000 |
| 5 percent | $100,000 | $150,000 |
| 10 percent | $200,000 | $50,000 |
A 10 percent deductible buys a cheaper policy. Owners take it to save premium, then find out after a hurricane that they cannot fund 200,000 dollars in the same month the rent stops. Pick the deductible you could write a check for the week after a storm, and keep a wind mitigation report on file so you are rated on the roof you actually have. The full breakdown of how named storm deductibles work on Florida strip mall insurance.
Water damage wording matters as much as the deductible. Flood, storm surge, sewer and drain backup, wind-driven rain through a roof the storm opened, and a plumbing leak inside a unit are five different things to a carrier, and a plaza policy pays for some, excludes some, and sub-limits the rest. Flood and surge are the separate flood policy. Sewer backup is an endorsement most plazas need and few have. Wind-driven rain is covered only if wind created the opening. Read the water language before the storm season, not after. The Florida hurricane deductible rules are in Florida Statute 627.701, and FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center shows the zone, which is a starting point and not the whole answer for a parking lot that drains badly.
A NNN lease moves cost to the tenant. It does not move the building, the parking lot or the rent roll off your policy. The owner still insures the shell, the common areas and the income. What the lease should do is make every tenant carry its own general liability naming you as additional insured, property coverage on its contents and improvements, and a waiver of subrogation, so that when a tenant’s fryer takes out three units, the tenant’s carrier pays first and yours does not become the claims history that raises your rate for five years.
Then somebody has to collect the certificates, read them, and chase the expired ones every year. Most owners do not, and the first time it matters is after the fire. I ran this process as a manager and I run it now as the agent. What a Florida retail tenant must carry under a NNN lease and what the landlord must verify. How to track tenant certificates without losing a week a year.
The building limit was set at purchase and never touched. Construction costs moved 40 percent and the limit did not, so you are either paying for value you do not have or facing a coinsurance penalty on the value you do. Have the replacement cost re-run every renewal.
The all other perils deductible on many plaza policies is still 1,000 or 2,500 dollars. Moving it to 10,000 on a building you would never claim a small loss on cuts premium and keeps the loss runs clean, which is worth more than the savings.
Property with one agent, flood with another, umbrella with a third, the LLC’s auto somewhere else. Nobody sees the whole program, coverage overlaps and gaps both go unnoticed, and no carrier is giving you the account credit that comes with writing all of it.
Divide your property premium by the building limit and multiply by 100. That is the number underwriters use. Track it year to year. If it moves and the roof, coast and tenant mix did not, the market moved, and the market can be shopped.
A quote that comes in 30 percent under the others usually dropped ordinance or law, cut business income to six months, moved the building to actual cash value, or excluded wind. Read the exclusions before the price.
The loss of rents limit should be the annual rent roll plus the extra expense of keeping tenants through a rebuild, not the number that covers the debt service. On a Gulf Coast plaza a rebuild after a storm can run past a year for permits alone.
The new roof, the re-piped drains, the panel replacement and the parking lot lighting are all rate credits, and none of them count if the underwriter cannot see the permit or the invoice. Keep a file. Send it with the application.
Taken to save premium, then unfundable the month the rent stops. If you could not write the check for 10 percent of the building limit the week after a hurricane, you do not have that coverage. Buy the deductible you can pay.
Owners sign the check. Property managers live with the policy: the certificate requests, the adjuster on site, the tenant whose hood suppression failed, the roofer’s COI, the lender’s annual letter, the non-renewal that lands in the manager’s inbox first. Dennis did that job. He knows the manager usually finds the problem in the program before the owner does, and usually gets blamed for it.
Hendrickson Insurance works directly with third-party and in-house managers on the owner’s program: one contact for every plaza in the portfolio, certificates issued the same day, tenant COI tracking set up so the manager is not chasing forty tenants in December, and a standing answer on what a new tenant use does to the rate before the lease is signed. The management company gets named as additional insured on the owner’s liability where the agreement calls for it.
Managers also carry their own exposure. A management agreement puts the firm on the hook for lease administration, certificate collection, vendor oversight and money handling. That is a professional liability claim when it goes wrong, and it is not covered by the owner’s policy. Hendrickson writes the management company’s own errors and omissions, general liability, workers compensation for the maintenance staff, and commercial auto for the trucks, alongside the owner’s program, so nothing falls between the two.
Owners search for strip mall insurance, strip center insurance, shopping center insurance, retail plaza insurance, retail center insurance and plaza insurance. Carriers call the same thing lessor’s risk only, or LRO, and sometimes commercial landlord insurance or multi-tenant retail building insurance. Underwriters split the world into neighborhood centers anchored by a grocer, unanchored strip centers, power centers with big-box tenants, outparcels and pad sites on the ring road, and mixed-use buildings with apartments or offices over the retail. All of them are written on this page’s program. Enclosed indoor malls are a different animal, with a schedule of values, a risk manager and program carriers, and Dennis quotes those case by case rather than pretending a plaza form fits.
Whatever you call it, the questions that decide the price are the same: what would it cost to rebuild, how old is the roof, how far is it from the water, who is in the units, how many units are dark, and what have you claimed in five years.
Metro guides: Tampa Bay, Orlando, South Florida, Jacksonville, Fort Myers and Naples. Each one covers the corridors, the county hazards, the tenant mix and the lender rules for that market.
The book is concentrated between Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor, on the corridors where neighborhood retail lives, and it reaches Orlando, the rest of Florida, and North Carolina, where Dennis holds a non-resident license. He is licensed statewide in Florida. These are the markets he can rate from memory.
Tamiami Trail, Bee Ridge, Fruitville, Clark Road and the Siesta Key and Longboat Key gateways. Bayfront and island retail is E&S for wind; inland corridors still place admitted.
Manatee CountyCortez Road, Manatee Avenue, SR 70, SR 64 and US 301. The newest plaza inventory on the coast, which means the best roofs and the best markets.
Hillsborough CountyDale Mabry, Hillsborough Avenue, Fowler, Bruce B. Downs and the Brandon corridor. Larger centers, older roofs, and more restaurant-heavy tenant mixes to underwrite around.
Pinellas County4th Street North, US 19, Gulf to Bay and the beach communities. The most coastal plaza inventory on the Gulf Coast and the tightest wind market.
South Sarasota CountyUS 41 Bypass, Jacaranda, Tamiami Trail and the Toledo Blade corridor. Fast growth, new retail, and lenders that ask for flood everywhere.
Charlotte CountyUS 41, Tamiami Trail and Kings Highway. Post-Ian roof replacements have reopened admitted markets for owners who kept the permits.
North CarolinaDennis holds a North Carolina non-resident license and places plazas there through national admitted and E&S markets: Beach Plan wind on the coast, hail and roof age in the Piedmont, flood in the mountains since Helene. The North Carolina guide.
StatewideDennis is licensed for the whole state. Orlando strip centers on Colonial, OBT and Semoran, Jacksonville and Fort Myers plazas, and Naples and Miami retail all get the same program and the same person. Inland Orlando plazas rate better on wind than anything on the coast; the rest of the underwriting is identical. The Orlando guide.
Before Hendrickson Insurance, Dennis Hendrickson managed shopping centers: leasing dark units, collecting certificates from tenants who did not want to send them, arguing with roofers, walking the parking lot after storms, and sitting across from the adjuster when a claim came in. Most agents who quote strip mall insurance have never run one. It shows in the policy: a business income limit that does not match the rent roll, a coinsurance clause nobody explained, tenant improvements insured twice, a named storm deductible the owner cannot fund.
The recent slip and fall claim on a client’s plaza is the shape of it. A law firm sent a demand. The parking lot cameras showed the claimant falling on her own with nothing on the ground. The carrier declined, the lawyer agreed, and the claim went away. Without the video it is her word against the owner’s, and that is a settlement. The full story, and why every plaza should have cameras.
One more thing that matters to plaza owners: Dennis writes both sides of your life. The strip center, the LLC’s umbrella, the house on the water, the cars and the boat, on one desk, with one person who knows how they fit. Business and personal, one agent.
Real claims, real numbers, no filler. Start with the cost post if you are shopping and the NNN post if you are signing a lease.
Building value, roof, coast, tenant mix, vacancy and loss runs, and which of them you can actually change before renewal.
WindPercentage deductibles, the math on a 2 million dollar plaza, and how owners get trapped by the cheap option.
LeasesAdditional insured, waiver of subrogation, contents and improvements, and the certificate language that holds up.
CertificatesA system for collecting, reading and renewing tenant COIs that takes an hour a quarter instead of a week a year.
PropertyHow under-insuring the building by 20 percent cuts every claim check, including the small ones, and how to set the limit.
LiabilityA billboard law firm, a parking lot fall, and the video that ended the claim. What cameras are worth to a plaza owner.
ComplianceAnnual testing, who is responsible under the lease, and why a failed assembly becomes an uncovered loss.
LeasingFilling dark units is an insurance strategy. What moved space when Dennis ran centers, and what was a waste of money.
Dennis reads every application himself and responds the same business day in most cases, always within 48 hours. If the plaza is not a fit for the markets he has, he says so on the first call instead of wasting your renewal window.
Dennis Hendrickson is the owner of Hendrickson Insurance in Sarasota, Florida, licensed general lines agent, FL License E095547, and the only person who touches your file. Before insurance he managed shopping centers, which is why this page reads the way it does. Sources used on this page: Florida Department of Financial Services, commercial property overview; Florida DFS commercial disaster FAQ; FloodSmart, NFIP commercial coverage; Florida Statute 627.701. Last reviewed September 2026.
Office, warehouse, mixed-use and single-tenant buildings across the Gulf Coast.
02 / Related CoverageEvery Florida strip center needs a flood policy. NFIP primary, excess above it.
03 / Related CoverageExcess liability above the plaza GL for owners with real assets.
04 / Related CoveragePremises liability for the parking lot and common areas sits on the GL form.
05 / Related CoverageMixed-use plazas with residential above get habitational treatment on that portion.
06 / Related CoverageThe owner’s own house, written by the same agent who writes the plaza.
Apply online or call 941-952-7991. Have your rent roll, current dec pages, roof age and loss runs ready.
Dennis Hendrickson changed a New Jersey state tennis rule at 17 and played four years of Division I tennis at UNC Charlotte. Today he writes both the commercial and the personal insurance for Gulf Coast owners himself, and he works a renewal or a claim the way he played: nothing conceded, no point given away.
When you apply, he answers. Every application goes straight to Dennis. He reads it himself and responds the same business day in most cases, always within 48 hours.
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