How many people can you cram into a space?

[Dusty]

Hi everyone,

I'm wondering what a good rule of thumb is on how many people you can
fit into a given space? I'm trying to find the maximum revenue
potential for a given space.

Say, given 1000 square foot (excluding conference rooms, and
bathrooms) what is the maximum membership capacity of permanent desk
members and walk-in members.

Just pulling some numbers out of the air. If permanent desk members
took up a footprint (desk, chair, and room to move) of 8x8ft on
average and walkins took up 5x5. You should be able to fit 10
permanent members and 14 walkins. (If I did my math right.)

Further if we assume only 60% of our walkins will be in the space at
any given time we could reserve up to 23 walkin memberships.

To those of you that own spaces. Do my average member footprints sound
about right? And how about my ratio of walkin members that are in the
space at any given time?

I'm looking for ballparks. :)

Thanks,
Dusty in Austin

[Jacob Sayles]

It's really dependent on the space.  Not all 1000 sqft spaces are created equal.  Susan and I have talked a lot about this and I've seen it come up before in various posts.  There is no clear answer, I'm sorry to say.  One factor that could sway the answer is priority.  We decided to put a higher priority on permanent desks and that will have a direct impact on how we organize the space.  If we were shooting for more drop-ins, we'd make different choices.  How's that for a non-answer?  

To paraphrase our approach, I'd say we came up with some conservative numbers to make sure we could commit to the three year lease, and we are leaving the rest for when we open.  Everything changes with each individual so we need to get them in before we know how/where the desks should be.  We have 5000 sqft and I'm thinking we can get 30-40 in here comfortably.  

Jacob Sayles

Office Nomads

Seattle, WA

officenomads.com

[Julie Gomoll]

Rule of thumb for office space is 100 sq. ft. per person. Jacob is right, though, it depends on the actual space and how you design it. This includes common areas - bathrooms, entry ways, hallways, etc.

We're designing 4000 feet - just under 1000 of that will be a coffee shop and kitchen. 3000 is for coworking. We plan to have room for 30 individual workers plus several small meeting rooms.

30-40 in 1000 square feet sounds like some seriously tight working conditions.

Keep in mind, too, that if you're doing any renovation for commercial space in Austin, you have to show that you have X parking spaces (depends on how you're classified) before you can even get a permit.

Julie

[Gregory Heller]

um, jacob is saying 30-40 for a 5k square ft space.

dusty seems to be suggesting 23 slots in a 1000 sqr ft space.

Julie is right, 100 sqr ft per person is reasonable, that is a 10x10
box, so with space for chairs, fesks file cabinets, common space
between cubes or isles or whatever.... it makes sense.

From experience, i have worked in smaller spaces, but would not really
want to, and if you want to keep people around, i would probably try
to stick as close to the 100 sqr ft as possible. This doesn't mean
that each person gets a 10 x 10 plot of floor space, but if you space
in 1000 sqr ft, i'm not sure how you could accommodate more than 10 ro
15 people comfortable when you account for the "common" space of isles
and printer table, garbage cans, mail boxes, etc...

[Alex Hillman]

FWIW, I don't think it's as formulaic as this but, on the other hand, this is the first space I've been part of designing.

That said...we have ~1500 square feet, a touch over 1000 of that being the main floor including our conference space. That main 1000 square feet holds 15 desks VERY comfortably (lots of open room to move around). We then have two mezzanines, one holding only a couple of desks right now but ultimately it will hold 6-8. The other mezz has a sofa, love seat, and lay-z-boy (and I've worked from each and every one of them). So we're at 25 "spots to work", not including the conference room which holds about 4 people, in just about 1500 square feet. Human occupancy is a bit closer to 6'x6', but again...its not really that scientific

Our desks are identical to those at CitizenSpace, 2' deep by 4' across. We have a few different cluster configurations to encourage and help different kinds of workers, too.

The best part about the configuration is that it's COMPLETELY changable at any time...none of the furniture is fixed in place or too big to move. For larger events (like our opening, and our upcoming movie night) all of the desks get moved to the edges of the space. Full time folks have put stakes in a desk of their choice, others grab whatever is available.

Ultimately, though...what do your users want? Bigger desks, but less conference space? Less desks, and a bigger "lounge". These are all questions that can be answered better once you've got an active community that's excited and ready to utilize the space that you're working diligently towards creating!

Cheers,
Alex

--
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--
-----
Alex Hillman
web.developer.innovation.consultant
vocal: 484.597.6256
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome
visual: www.weknowhtml.com | www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.indyhall.org

[Julie Gomoll]

Yes, the 100/ft per person rule of thumb is just that - rule of thumb. If you start out with wide open space and leave it that way, you get a lot more flexibility. Once you start adding rooms and walls, it changes - not just because of the reduced flexibility, but also because of the actual space taken by walls & doors. We started with 4000 sq. ft., and even though we have a very open floor plan, quite a bit gets used by walls, room for storage, the kitchen, the cafe bar, bathrooms, etc.

We're doing everything we can to be flexible as well. All our desks will be on heavy duty, lockable wheels. They can be rolled together in various configurations or left alone. The walls of a few of the small (10x10 or 10x12) meeting rooms will be on rails so they can be opened and merged to form larger meeting rooms.

This is a first for me, too. It's extra-challenging because it's not like there are a bunch of places out there we can point to and say "we're tyring to do something like this". This is a new model, which makes it all the more fun, IMO :)

Julie Gomoll
Austin

[Columbus Bryce]

I've heard mention of these IKEA desks before... could you give us an
idea of which specific model it is?

On Oct 26, 8:41 am, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Alex Hillman]

These tops:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60117016
With these legs:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10105290

There are other dimensions of desk-tops in the same line if you wanted bigger/longer ones, but for the price, these are an EXCELLENT deal, easy to move/arrange, and if one gets damaged it's not a huge loss.

We had sort of a desk/chair-buliding party where we had members come by during out set-up period and help put furniture together. BYO drill. It was a good time!

-Alex

[Dusty]

This is great information. Thanks everyone.

Great tip on the Ikea desk's! Thanks Alex.

So we think each person takes up about 36sq/ft to 100sq/ft of space.
That's a pretty broad range! :) But great information for planning
purposes. Anymore experience out there on the matter?

What do you guys think about the membership to occupancy ratio? In
other words. Say you have 100 members, would you say 60 of them are in
the space at any given time (on average)?

Again, looking for ballparks.

Thanks,
-Dusty in Austin

On Oct 26, 12:15 pm, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> These tops:http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60117016
> With these legs:http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10105290
>
> There are other dimensions of desk-tops in the same line if you wanted
> bigger/longer ones, but for the price, these are an EXCELLENT deal, easy to
> move/arrange, and if one gets damaged it's not a huge loss.
>
> We had sort of a desk/chair-buliding party where we had members come by
> during out set-up period and help put furniture together. BYO drill. It was
> a good time!
>
> -Alex
>

> On 10/26/07, Columbus Bryce <brycegl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I've heard mention of these IKEA desks before... could you give us an
> > idea of which specific model it is?
>
> > On Oct 26, 8:41 am, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Our desks are identical to those at CitizenSpace, 2' deep by 4' across.
>
> --
> -----
> --
> -----
> Alex Hillman
> web.developer.innovation.consultant
> vocal: 484.597.6256

> digital: a...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome

[Alex Hillman]

I don't think we (at IndyHall, anyway) have any stable enough numbers to present after 60 days of being open, and even then, its very very subjective. I don't think even a ballpark would help you. Our members are not your members, within our own membership use and use cases vary widely.

For the gabillionth time(and I'm still smiling when I say that!): all of these figures will become evident when you have some semblance of a community interested in utilizing a space together. Ask them, not us! I understand that for business plans and investors, these figures might be necessary, but that's just one more reason to spend the time a) building the community and b) putting yourself in a position to bootstrap.

digital: al...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome

[John Sechrest]

On 10/26/07, Dusty <dusty...@gmail.com> wrote:

So we think each person takes up about 36sq/ft to 100sq/ft of space.
That's a pretty broad range! :) But great information for planning
purposes. Anymore experience out there on the matter?

When I was planning spaces at the university, we used the number 120  Sq ft per faculty member.
This is for offices with doors that close.

You also might want to consider that many places are getting away from cubes in the work space.
You might find that if you structure it as a social space, that you can use denser numbers.

I know that in my office, I like to have white board space. So I went to the lumberyard and got some of the white 4x8 masonite sheets. They work fine for white board space (a bit on the cheap and quick side)

So having cluster spaces with good chairs and walls with floor to ceiling white boards might make the space more flexible.

What do you guys think about the membership to occupancy ratio? In
other words. Say you have 100 members, would you say 60 of them are in
the space at any given time (on average)?

I think this number will vary a great deal depending on your audience.

--
John Sechrest          .        
Corvallis Benton        .            
    Chamber Coalition      .          
       420 NW 2nd                   .        
              (541) 757-1505              . sech...@corvallisedp.com
                                                                      .        
                                                                                    .

[Jacob Sayles]

We are our own investors at Office Nomads so we only had to get to the point where we believed it would work out.  Of course I started out believing, but I still wanted some solid numbers before I wrote my $100k check.  And when I say "solid" that too is relative.  Mostly I started getting people together for beers/coffee and talking with folks.  When I saw strong demand, I started roughing out a sketch of what things would look like.  From there I made sure some conservative ramp up projections and space allocations fit within the budget & building... lots of tuning and not all fine.  It's a balancing act.  We talk a lot about all the things we won't know until we open the doors... next Thursday.   Since there is so much we don't know, we are doing our best to be flexible, and receptive. 

Jacob Sayles

Office Nomads

Seattle, WA

[Dusty]

I certainly buy into the philosophy of building the community first
and bootstrapping. But I believe this type of planning is valuable and
is not in conflict with community building or bootstrapping.

The reason is, if I have these formulas:

a) space_total_area / space_per_person = max_occupancy
b) max_memberships = max_occupancy / occupancy_ratio
c) expenses / max_memberships = cost_per_member

Then I can balance (or combine) those equations to estimate the
unknown. So for example, coming at it from a community first and
bootstrapping angle, if I have 10 folks interested in joining a space
but don't have a space yet then I could use the following formula (if
I know the space_per_person).

a) your_friends * space_per_person = total_space_needed

"space_per_person" and "occupancy_ratio" are hard to estimate. That's
why I'm seeking experience. :)

I can see how it might be a stretch to estimate a generic occupancy
ratio. It might be safest to assume the space will be at 100%
occupancy until you know otherwise. If you estimate a low occupancy,
and you end up being wrong, you may end up charging too little to
cover costs or you'll have too many people in your space. On the other
hand, if you estimate high you may charge too much or have an empty
space. Estimating too high seems easier to correct though.

Useful? Are my formulas whack? ( I'm actually not that great at math,
I just pretend to be. :p )

-Dusty

On Oct 26, 2:30 pm, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I don't think we (at IndyHall, anyway) have any stable enough numbers to
> present after 60 days of being open, and even then, its very very
> subjective. I don't think even a ballpark would help you. Our members are
> not your members, within our own membership use and use cases vary widely.
>
> For the gabillionth time(and I'm still smiling when I say that!): all of
> these figures will become evident when you have some semblance of a
> community interested in utilizing a space together. Ask them, not us! I
> understand that for business plans and investors, these figures might be
> necessary, but that's just one more reason to spend the time a) building the
> community and b) putting yourself in a position to bootstrap.
>

[Julie Gomoll]

Dusty -

I really, strongly recommend you estimate low, at least for budgeting purposes. If you estimate 100% occupancy and budget for that, and then 3 people drop out after a month, you could end up in a bind. Budget for less, and if you end up with 100% occupancy, you have a crisis of success :)

Julie Gomoll
Austin

[Fernando Maclen]

An architect told me that in 107 sqft is usual space for 1 person and
a desk.
Although that size is for normal office workstations, coworking spaces
tend to be smaller.

[Dusty]

Yeah, I see what you mean Julie. I think formula c) needs tweaking.

Illustration about occupancy ratio (My apologizes if this is painfully
obvious to anyone.)

If your space can handle 10 occupants. Deciding on a 80% occupancy
ratio would mean you try to sell at max 12 - 13 memberships. You're
assuming on any given day 2 - 3 people will not come into the space.
You could also add padding for slow months by calculating the member
dues as if your space can handle only, lets say, 6 occupants.

So perhaps formula c) changes to introduce a new variable
"min_membership":

a) space_total_area / space_per_person = max_occupancy
b) max_memberships = max_occupancy / occupancy_ratio

c) expenses / min_memberships = cost_per_member

Then max_memberships is the most memberships you can sell (and is the
best potential your space can achieve) and min_memberships is the
fewest amount of members you can have and be sustainable.

Thoughts?

-Dusty