Could London HackSpace purchase the Kingsway Telephone Exchange?

[Mike]

At first glance this sounds quite insane. On the other hand, so does
the idea of running out a fibre optic Internet connection to the middle
of a field (before someone corrects me, I'm thinking CCC not EMF). So
does running your own GSM network (think HAR here) and launching a
rocket 25km into the air, I mean who the f*** would let you do that?
(As it turns out, you speak to the CAA and they clear the airspace for
you. Doesn't that sounds nuts). So, back to the question in hand:
Could London HackSpace raise the capitial to purchase Kingsway Telephone
Exchange from BT Telecommunications PLC?

Is it still for sale? It was placed for sale by BT in 2008. I can't
find any indication that a sale has been completed and so it is my
belief that the site is still available.

Could we really raise four million pounds? Obviously for a start it
seems extreemly unlikely that we could just find four million quid in a
quick whip round. So we'd have to look to a bank to finance the
purchase. I have no idea how much the plan to charge but it seems
sensible that it will depend on the likelyhood of them ever seeing that
money again. So the next question appears to be "how likely is that?"
Firstly the good news is that the bank is purchasing a piece of property
and it's doing so in the middle of a recession. In all likelyhood, even
if we fuck up really bad, the bank can sell Kingsway for what they paid
for it. That massively reduces their risk. It's slightly unfortunate
that we would not be able to start from the beginning with a MRR that
would cover the mothly repayments but that is what banks tend to do when
they loan money to businesses and we have plenty of room to grow. This
then brings us onto how we grow our revenue stream. Firstly, let's look
at our standard model - the subscription. At the moment we are running
at a capcity of 500 to 2,600 sq feet of space. Scaling that up to the
70,000 odd square feet of Kingsway gives us approximatly 25 times the
space, hence a theoretical max membership of 12,500. Let's assume they
pay an average subscription of 20 quid a month, that gives a MRR of
250,000 GBP a month or 3,000,000 a year. Nice. OK, so that gives us an
idea of the supply, what demand can we expect? Several things work in
our favour. Firstly, for quite a while, we haven't even tried to expand
and that suggests that if we put the word out, we can see an
acceleration of our current growth. Second, with a Central London (and
let's face it, very fucking cool) location, we make ourselves far more
appealing to North, West and South London. Also, we make ourselves far
more accessible to the overground stations and hence to people
travlinging in from outside the M25. We need to further quanitify that.
Could we really scale to 12,500 members and how long would that take?
One thing that does work in our favour is that having 70,000 sq feet of
Central London real estate, while being a group of 500 is that we can
rent out what we are not using. The rental income should help offset
the shortage in membership fees. I suspect aside from subscription, our
biggest revenue stream would be venue hire.

An idea was suggested (and I'm sure in jest) that we start a pledge.
This may not be as insane as it sounds. Having a certain amount of
capital up front is certainly advantagous and anything we don't have to
borrow from the bank we don't have to pay back. To that extent and
along similar lines, maybe we could explore something along the lines of
lifetime membership. Offered it return for an upfront payment.

In summary, what I'm saying is that the idea appears at first to be
bonkers. With a little though it appears that it *might* be viable.
Maybe it's worth doing a litle more research to see if there is any
feasibility in it? Perhaps trying to put some real figures on the
numbers above that I've pulled out of my arse. Maybe working out of
there is a realistic probability of a bank lending us some money and, of
course, working out if the fucking thing is actually still for sale :-)

Mike.

[tgreer]

Mike,

Fuck off with your retarded suggestions. Your noise on the ML is worse than the rest of the trolls and drama llamas put together....

Be a bit more sensible in your input please, or as Charles says you'll be put on moderation.

All the best

Thomas

[M]

On the topic of postings on the list, do you really need to swear and
hurl abuse in most of your communiqué?

--
>
++++++++++[>+>+++>++
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+++++.+++..---------
.++++++++++.<<+++.<.

[Adrian Godwin]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 7:23 PM, Mike <hack...@norgie.net> wrote:
> then brings us onto how we grow our revenue stream. Firstly, let's look
> at our standard model - the subscription. At the moment we are running
> at a capcity of 500 to 2,600 sq feet of space. Scaling that up to the
> 70,000 odd square feet of Kingsway gives us approximatly 25 times the
> space, hence a theoretical max membership of 12,500. Let's assume they
> pay an average subscription of 20 quid a month, that gives a MRR of
> 250,000 GBP a month or 3,000,000 a year. Nice. OK, so that gives us an
> idea of the supply, what demand can we expect? Several things work in

I think this may be a little optimistic, both in the market size and
the ability of such an extrapolation to scale.

The idea of renting out the surplus space is superficially reasonable
but it would actually be most of it, so LHS would effectively become
primarily a property manager, heavily dependent in the short term on
the ability to let it out. If that space could economically be rented
out in the current climate, i'm pretty sure it would already have been
done.

-adrian

[Russ Garrett]

Well volunteered.

If your property management venture works out, you can certainly count
London Hackspace in as a tenant as long as the price is below £10/sq
ft.

Cheers,

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Benjamin Blundell]

I spoke with Jasper briefly about this. I rent a desk currently but if
the hackspace moves, so will I if I can, and I bet Martin might
consider it too. Its not much of an extra revenue stream but it lends
a little clout to our appeal. It *looks* good because the times are on
our side. People and government seem excited about this kind of thing.

B

[Jasper Wallace]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012, Mike wrote:

[snip]

> In summary, what I'm saying is that the idea appears at first to be
> bonkers. With a little though it appears that it *might* be viable.
> Maybe it's worth doing a litle more research to see if there is any
> feasibility in it? Perhaps trying to put some real figures on the
> numbers above that I've pulled out of my arse. Maybe working out of
> there is a realistic probability of a bank lending us some money and, of
> course, working out if the fucking thing is actually still for sale :-)

I don't think it would work for us. Fire would be very serious in such an
enclosed space with limited exit/evacuation posibilities. We wouldn't be
able to do welding or laser cutting or anything that produced fumes.

A kiln/flymo incident would be very serious.

I'd much prefer somewhere with windows that can be opened and real
sunlight. I'd also like roof access for roof gardens/astronomy/antenna
farms/ sat dishes etc.

--
[http://pointless.net/] [0x2ECA0975]

[Jonty Wareing]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgreer" <ukt...@gmail.com>
>
> I suggested this and was shot down by Jonty....

Which is a way of interpreting "I disagreed". I pointed out that every
hackerspace we know of that tried this regretted it later.

Personally I would campaign against the hackspace letting out rooms to
people, as I think it significantly changes the environment and the
relationship between the space and its members.

--jonty

[Russ Garrett]

On 27 September 2012 00:56, Jonty Wareing <jo...@jonty.co.uk> wrote:
>> I suggested this and was shot down by Jonty....
>
> Which is a way of interpreting "I disagreed". I pointed out that every
> hackerspace we know of that tried this regretted it later.
>
> Personally I would campaign against the hackspace letting out rooms to
> people, as I think it significantly changes the environment and the
> relationship between the space and its members.

I think that's a generalisation and that it depends how we structure
it. I don't see how separating out surplus space and subletting it to
a few tenants on a relatively long-term basis (as opposed to actually
offering a service renting desks out within the space) makes any
difference to the relationship between the space and its members.

I also am unaware of any hackerspaces who have tried this.

Having run the numbers, I now suspect that it's unlikely that we'll be
able to get the space above Electrowerkz without subletting.

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Benjamin Blundell]

I kind of agree with Jonty - I was somewhat loathe to bring up my
suggestion it but ultimately, I chose where I work at the moment
because of its nearness to the space (I did look at a few). I agree
its not something we want to do with the space but if it meant the
space could be part of a something bigger that it couldn't have on its
own, it could work I think.

B

[Benjamin Blundell]

My imagining of buying a significantly large building would mean that
the space would have kind of what it has now, only more, and there
would be units or rooms that could be let - not renting desks or rooms
*inside* the space at all! That would suck. Im thinking of a Netill
house scenario I guess where there was a massive area for anyone and
then smaller units on one side.

B

[Tim Reynolds]

I don't think anyone wants to be a landlord. Subletting also means having a duty to make sure space activities don't interfere with letters. Having a huge space isn't any use if we can't do goofy things for fear of upsetting customers.

[Billy]

Whether the BT place or the Torrens Street venue, or somewhere else
entirely is used, it's better to sort this out in advance, than go
stress out doing it at short notice.

One method would be to set the building management group up as a
Somerset Rules Co-operative. This would allow more than one kind of
enterprise to use whatever space we find, but would still allow the
members to retain control. The whole thing would still need to be
organised and run effectively.

As long as the tail doesn't end up wagging the dog. There were a
couple of co-op's i studied, where they had to keep a careful eye on
what they were doing, so they didn't over-extend themselves or their
resources. (Think self-funded boot-strapped start-up, as opposed to VC-
funded start-up. )

They had to keep a careful eye on "Not missing the point, of why we
started this." The money is not the overall aim, but you've still got
to make sure the bills are paid, and the dishes get cleaned. Sure, we
need to design a better machine for making sure that the
infrastructure gets maintained.

As long as we don't let the systems we build degenerate into
Beamterrenschaft-style bureacracy, we'll be ok.

We still need to get this sorted out explicitly, so everyone knows
where we are coming from, and can choose to participate, or go off on
their own tangent. Whatever solution we choose to implement won't
matter in the long run, as it won't be the optimum, it'll just be the
next set of duct-tape and string, that will get us to the next stage.

On Sep 27, 9:44 am, Tim Reynolds <t...@christwithfries.net> wrote:
> I don't think anyone wants to be a landlord. Subletting also means having a duty to make sure space activities don't interfere with letters. Having a huge space isn't any use if we can't do goofy things for fear of upsetting customers.
>

> On 27 Sep 2012, at 09:34, Benjamin Blundell <onida...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > My imagining of buying a significantly large building would mean that
> > the space would have kind of what it has now, only more, and there
> > would be units or rooms that could be let - not renting desks or rooms
> > *inside* the space at all! That would suck. Im thinking of a Netill
> > house scenario I guess where there was a massive area for anyone and
> > then smaller units on one side.
>
> > B
>

> > On 27 September 2012 09:32, Benjamin Blundell <onida...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I  kind of agree with Jonty - I was somewhat loathe to bring up my
> >> suggestion it but ultimately, I chose where I work at the moment
> >> because of its nearness to the space (I did look at a few). I agree
> >> its not something we want to do with the space but if it meant the
> >> space could be part of a something bigger that it couldn't have on its
> >> own, it could work I think.
>
> >> B
>

> >> On 27 September 2012 08:42, Russ Garrett <r...@garrett.co.uk> wrote:
> >>> On 27 September 2012 00:56, Jonty Wareing <jo...@jonty.co.uk> wrote:
> >>>>> I suggested this and was shot down by Jonty....
>
> >>>> Which is a way of interpreting "I disagreed". I pointed out that every
> >>>> hackerspace we know of that tried this regretted it later.
>
> >>>> Personally I would campaign against the hackspace letting out rooms to
> >>>> people, as I think it significantly changes the environment and the
> >>>> relationship between the space and its members.
>
> >>> I think that's a generalisation and that it depends how we structure
> >>> it. I don't see how separating out surplus space and subletting it to
> >>> a few tenants on a relatively long-term basis (as opposed to actually
> >>> offering a service renting desks out within the space) makes any
> >>> difference to the relationship between the space and its members.
>
> >>> I also am unaware of any hackerspaces who have tried this.
>
> >>> Having run the numbers, I now suspect that it's unlikely that we'll be
> >>> able to get the space above Electrowerkz without subletting.
>
> >>> --
> >>> Russ Garrett

> >>> r...@garrett.co.uk

[Steve Kelly]

Hows about,

A charitable trust is set uneqivalently unattached to the london Hackspace, members of London Hackspace then bequeath a certain sum of money  which is tax free (to us as a donation).The amount bequeathed gives us the 25% deposit needed for the purchace of suitable premises which is then rented to London Hackspace at a rent equal to the mortgage repayments. Its charitable aim could be amongst others to provide free space to 1 or 2 business startups with the proviso that they take on a local apprentice or provide an internship.

The only caveat I can see with this is we will attract donations from others.Would we accept 'fat cat' donations? er, lets see now, Yes!
Any excess monies bequeathed to the trust by others could be used to help out other hackspaces around the country purchase their own premises so long as they abide by the ethos of the trust.

A trust could be set up tomorrow,appoint temporary trustees, until voted in and set up a bank account and see what we can raise from our membership and take it from there. If it doesn't work out we simple BACS the donations, end of and we carry on renting.

      'The trust will be able to take advantage of many tax benefits. Apart from the tax relief on your own donations to the trust, it will not pay tax on its investment income. It will not pay corporation tax or inheritance tax, or business rates (there is mandatory relief against business rates at 80% and a further 20% on a discretionary basis) if it eventually runs its own office. Also the trust will not have to register for VAT, unless it is supplying a significant amount of products or services that are subject to VAT. This is unlikely if it is simply making grants to other charitable organisations.'

Best wishes

Steve

[Russ Garrett]

How about we forego making complex legal structures until we find
somewhere where this is actually feasible?

Russ

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Paul Randle-Jolliffe]

there is no reason why a separate group cannot do this if it is as suggested unattached to HS as it is separate an un attached and it could offer HS the space as a beneficiary and to others. 

it depends entirely then on if that group can make it work and if HS like what is proposed to it, i am sure there are other groups that might find this interesting 

several options for a WorkSpace organisation

for profit

not for profit

cooperative

charity

--

Paul Randle-Jolliffe Esq
Practicing Principal (Lay Advocate & Public Interest Intervener)

Patrocinium Interventus
Isle of Wight, England.

www.patrocinium.eu

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[Kimball Johnson]

On 27 September 2012 14:16, Paul Randle-Jolliffe <pa...@patrocinium.eu> wrote:
> there is no reason why a separate group cannot do this if it is as suggested
> unattached to HS as it is separate an un attached and it could offer HS the
> space as a beneficiary and to others.

Absolutely not, but those that are interested should create a separate
mailing list and make a single invitation to this and other lists to
join the discussion.

Kimball

[Paul Randle-Jolliffe]

why so, would it not just be another HS  project interest group?

until it became more formal that is

[tom]

Surely the occupy movement have the funds to purchase it outright?

[Mark Steward]

Cool, we're way off topic now.

[Paul Randle-Jolliffe]

lol nope

[Akbal Randhawa]

I know I am new but it seems to me that the discussion though fun is entering the realms of fantasy.
Is it not best to work within the budget that has been set, assuming a budget has been set and acquire the space either rent or buy. There have beven a few suggestions maybe more are needed but perhaps with a budget limit, I think £10/sqft was mentioned.

Sorry to bring the party down but a little bit of realism is not always a bad thing.

[Monty]

Don't be sorry. More people like you are needed to keep the trolls and bikeshedders at bay.