Building
The Building
- It's a 22,000 sq ft building, built as a meeting hall for the Ligure Club in 1933, on Shattuck and 48th. After decades serving as a social hub for members of the Oakland Scavengers club, appropriately enough, a garbage collecting collective, it was transformed into the Omni, a music venue featuring mostly heavy metal and rock that provides the namesake for this project.
Space Features
- a appx 4,000 sq ft, 2 story ballroom / event space with mezzanine
- an industrial kitchen & walk-in freezer (needs fixing up)
- a massive back room with capacity for vertical expansion
- 55'-ish ceilings
- massive basement with windows above street level (currently blacked out)
- a separate room that used to function as a disco (with lighted floor)
- a warren of odd little rooms, a stage, lots of bathrooms, skylights throughout
Price/Sq Ft
Preliminary estimate of room rates can be found on this spreadsheet.
The rates in the spreadsheet are based on the following assumptions:
- We have a fixed target rent that we have to make every month. You can adjust the rent amount on the Summary sheet.
- We want a specific fraction of that rent to come from dedicated space. Currently set to 50% on the Summary sheet - can be adjusted up if you want to more strongly discourage dedicated space.
- $/sqft for individual rooms are scaled by a quality score. Each +1 in quality correspond to a 10% increase in $/sqft (adjustable from the Summary sheet).
- I've assumed that almost all storage areas will eventually become dedicated space, even if they have not yet been allocated to individual groups yet. I've included those under a separate heading "rented".
- Given the amount of rent we want to get from dedicated space, and the amount of dedicated space all groups want, we can calculate how much we should charge for each room to exactly match the rent.
- Use of the shared space is priced separately, based on how many "shares" each group contributes. We'll need to specify how much use of the shared resources one share corresponds to - e.g. one share could be equivalent to 10 members hanging out at the Omni on a daily basis, or using one of the basement rooms once a week for a 2-hour class, or reserving the ballroom for an event twice a year.
- Groups who also have dedicated space are also required to take on a minimum number of shares proportional to the square footage of their dedicated space. In other words, we don't want groups that will lock themselves into their space and never use the shared space. I have fairly arbitrarily set that minimum number to 1 share per 500 sqft (adjustable from the Summary sheet).
- Groups who do not have dedicated space (or only have a bit of storage space) will need to make an honest calculation of how many "shares" of the shared resources of the building they will need. For now, I have picked the number of shares for BAPS and Oakland Nights Live to match the amount of rent they said they could afford to pay.
- Once we have an allocation of shares in the shared space, we simply divide the remainder of the rent proportional to those shares.
- The calculation of $/sqft for each of the rooms should only need to be done once (possibly updated if and when the total rent goes up, or if we make a policy decision to increase the %rent from dedicated space). The cost per share in the shared space may go up or down over time, depending on how many groups join or leave the Omni, and how much dedicated space actually gets rented. If groups leave, the remaining groups will need to shoulder a larger fraction of the rent, which will be reflected in a higher rate per share of the shared space.
--Patrik (talk) 12:22, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
Distribution of Space
Tentative Distribution of Space (Not final, will likely change!)
- Sudo Room: Half bocce ball court room (plus adjacent storage rooms, contingent on their use either for hacker spa, ccl bsl2 lab, or for woodshop/metalshop for sudo to contain any contaminants)
- BAPS: mobile units - based out of a balcony room in the ballroom, having classes in unused space around the building as needed
- Timeless, Infinite Light: 2nd floor, Balcony room above bar, on corner of Shattuck / 48th (NE corner)
- HackerSpa Wellness Center: Cluster of rooms between bar and bocce ball court room
- Counter Culture Labs: North half bocce ball court room (plus adjacent storage rooms, unless the Spa absolutely needs those)
- Food Not Bombs: Shares basement industrial kitchen & food storage area with cafe-bookstore, hopefully serve food too upstairs to the community - either in the cafe, or the ballroom, etc
- La Commune Cafe & Bookstore: Bar area
- Live Space: Disco room in back (NW corner)
- Oakland Nights Live: Uses ballroom area for performances, some storage in the building somewhere
- Celluloid Processing Labs: Part of the basement
- Creative Empowerment Project: Part of basement (screenprinting gear)
- Peak Agency: most likely in common space only, for workshops and skillshares
- Schedule-able shared spaces around the building
- Ballroom (scheduled mostly as per current Common room)
- Parts of the basement (including three 200 sqft rooms and a 1200 sqft space that can be used as classrooms)
- Bookstore / Cafe
Use of Space
- How do we envision using the space?
- To collaborate on projects
- To host classes and performances
- To network, meet each other, welcome newcomers
- To store resources for common use (or equitably restricted)
- Concerns about use of space
- Will there be commercial activity in the space?
- Yes, bookstore/cafe will operate as businesses
- will profit-sharing be required of profitable endeavors?
- Ideally, consensus can be reached that profitable endeavors can help to subsidize rent/mortgage/property taxes
- Will there be commercial activity in the space?
Financial Information
See also Business Model for Omni's membership structure and flows of income and expenditures.
- Rental Terms
- Expenses
- Move-in Costs
- Monthly Rent
- Revenue
- From Member Collectives
- From Other Supporters
- Loans
- Donations
- Grants
- Expenses
- Info on possible property tax exemption
Legal Concerns
- Permits
- Zoning
- Licensing and Certification
- Fire Safety
Here's the CA building code regulations regarding emergency exits and maximum occupancy etc.:
I believe we would fall under Occupancy Classification B - Business Group, which includes offices, educational occupancy above 12th grade, laboratories (for testing, research and instruction), print shops, professional services, training and skill development not within a school or academic program. http://www.ecodes.biz/ecodes_support/free_resources/2013California/13Fire/PDFs/Chapter%202%20-%20Definitions.pdf
Internets
- Comcast (yuck) will sell us 100/20 mbit lines for $115 per month per line (with some installation cost for second+ lines). Probably two of those lines would be enough.
- They actually claim we'll get the advertised speeds as well.
- Webpass contacted us but are super expensive. We asked them for free/discounted pricing due to excessive awesomeness. Have yet to hear back
Other Facilities
X Restrooms available now Y from October