have any teams had any luck approaching local malls for spaces to practice?

[amos229]

A few members have brought up the idea of asking for space in our local mall for driver training. I was wondering if any teams have had luck with this idea? Any advice would be appreciated. Thankyou.

[Nuttyman54]

interesting idea...we haven't tried it tho, we use the school parking lot

[AndyB]

interesting idea...we haven't tried it tho, we use the school parking lot

we use our library, and dont even tear up the carpeting... too much.

[StephLee]

Too bad our team lives so far away from the mall...best we have is Wal-Mart, and that'd never work. We do have a ski resort with a big lodge, and it closes early on Sundays and Mondays...works pretty well.

[KenWittlief]

to practice effectively you need to have at least part of the playfield setup, with scoring components and goals.

Over the years we have knocked stacks of boxes through the windows at our factory, knocked computers off their supports smashing to the floor, taken out florescent lights on the ceiling, almost set off the sprinklers once, bashed into walls numerous times.

Off hand I cant think of any reason why a mall would not let us practice in their open indoor areas with our experimental robots :^)

[artdutra04]

Where does your team build your robot? We try to find any open space (eg. the janitors aren't cleaning it or it isn't being used) in the school to drive our robot in to practice. Sometimes we're in the cafeteria, others in the main hallway, and still yet other times in the music room, stage, auditorium, gymnasium, various classrooms or the library. Although my team hasn't asked our local mall for practice space to drive a robot, we have brought our robot to the mall on two different occasions while promoting FIRST.

Simply said, running a large FRC robot in the mall is not a good idea. After hitting the Best Buy's sign last year, we decided not to run the FRC Robot in the mall this year. Only the Vex robot ran around. :p

More Pictures: http://www.team228.org/index/promotefirst/05/mall.htm

http://www.team228.org/images/2005/mall/mall18.jpg (http://www.team228.org/index/promotefirst/05/mall.htm)

[gburlison]

If the mall has an empty store it might not be a bad idea. I would not want to do it in the hallway. Last year Chapel Hills Mall let us use an empty store to build our robot. The space was big enough for about half the field and it worked out well for us. This year the mall does not have an empty space that they will let us use. I think the economy has improved enough that they do not want to pass up a chance to rent the space. This year we will build in a temopary/modular classroom (trailer).

[amos229]

AS for driving in a parking lot we have the white stuff called snow. 229 is spread out, 2 highschools(salmon river and massena and cLARKSONu. Massena is inbetween both of the others but i dont believe we have had any luck with the school. So we are looking fgor other places in massena, the mall is the only one i believe is heated oput of a list i compiled.

[Kyle A]

There is not a mall close to our team. We use our schools gym if it is open if it is not we use the hall way.

[Josh Murphy]

We have a mall really close by it is pretty much ran down because the new one opened about 5to 6 years ago. it is a good idea if they have the space but why don't you ask the school to provide you a permenant room. Our school gives us 5 rooms to use at our own terms and that is all the rooms are dedicated for has anyone tried to talk to the school? or even the district i'm sure they would listen it is for a good cause. dont stop bothering them until they give in. :) :)

[Rohan_DHS]

....Our school gives us 5 rooms to use at our own terms and that is all the rooms are dedicated...
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: YOU GUYS GET 5 rooms?!?!?!?!?!?!? we have 1 the size of a janitor's closet! (can fit 1 table lol and JUST a little bit of room to keep our parts in the tote things that FIRST gives us) :( lol

[Zach Purser]

We have a mall really close by it is pretty much ran down because the new one opened about 5to 6 years ago. it is a good idea if they have the space but why don't you ask the school to provide you a permenant room. Our school gives us 5 rooms to use at our own terms and that is all the rooms are dedicated for has anyone tried to talk to the school? or even the district i'm sure they would listen it is for a good cause. dont stop bothering them until they give in. :) :)

I think every school in our county has at least a dozen trailers for classrooms, so there's no way anyone around here has a classroom, much less 5, to themselves. Our workshop is an old refrigerated trailer, and we set up our practice field in the gym when there isn't something else going on. Any chance of finding an old warehouse, or any church gyms that you could use?

[Jessica Boucher]

I'm surprised noone else from 237 have mentioned this, but we did one at the Brass Mill Center back in 99 or 00 (it's getting to be so long ago I can hardly remember.)

I don't think the management really understood what we said when we asked "to set up a booth and drive our robot around in front of it", and it took a lot of convincing to get done. I would suggest sending along a picture of what you would like to do to give them a better feel of what will happen.

Attaching pictures of other mall setups (like GUS') may convince them further that this is not as much as a far-out idea as it sounds, if other malls have agreed to do it.

I would discuss liability, and after the demo occurs, send a thank-you note with a picture of the robot on display at the mall. Not only should you have a picture of the demo anyway, but it's something cool for the mall to display to show that they care about the community.

[amos229]

thanx for the ideas. Being in northern new york any buildings that arent being used arent heated so that rules out empty warehouses. i think our mall might let us in because there are about 7 spaces that are empty. as for school there isnt any space for us besides the machine shops but if the play feild is portable we might be able to work out of the gyms

[aaeamdar]

We build in basement rooms with equipment already there. We are planning to have a set up for the game in our school's gym (Team 1719 in Baltimore).

[Kims Robot]

Last year we had an offer from a company that helps rent out the strip malls in the area.... they were going to give us an old clothing store since the owner wouldnt be able to rent it. Unfortunately the timing didnt work out all that well for us, but they were going to give us the old store.

Just to think about though, you may have to have a HUGE chunk of liability insurance... Harris was set to cover this for us since they have extended building insurance or something like that, and you may also have to pay for utilities... but its worth looking into!

[CourtneyB]

Well, the beginning of the year we were thinking about have a practice competetion at Woodfield mall, which is a huge mall in schaumburg,il., but it takes wayyy to much work to go through to try to practice in there etc.

-Court-

[BRosser314]

our school district just spent like $40 million on renovations of 8 or 9 schools. and since where we work is at the junior high, they just got a whole new wing added on with a nice with carpet about the size of half a playing field. the carpet might even be the same type as in comps, so we got lucky. but despite our schools $40 million dollar investment they didnt do anything to the woodshop that we work in or the computers we use.

[Ashley Weed]

Chuck 84 digs... since 2003 season I believe.

[lukevanoort]

I can see this as a possible fundraising opportunity as well. Imagine a team working in a mall with the doors open, but barriers to keep spectators from interfering with the robot (I envision glass or plexiglass) and a donation box. If your team is able to sell something, that could be there too.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I can see this as a possible fundraising opportunity as well. Imagine a team working in a mall with the doors open, but barriers to keep spectators from interfering with the robot (I envision glass or plexiglass) and a donation box. If your team is able to sell something, that could be there too.

He has a great idea here that I'd like to branch off of.

A quick warning: when we demonstrated at Payless supermarket, we weren't permitted to get profit, becasue they only let us do the demo as a non-profit community organization. Make sure that you and your host agree on rules before you get your robot/merchandise in there.

I recommend this as a chance to advertise your team, your regionals, and anything else through your robot. Practice what you can in empty areas, but near the end of the season, use the presence of an audience in an area of a mall to give your drivers a bit of practice at working under pressure to impress local audiences. If your team designs any kind of practice drive, try equipping that with other arm prototypes (if you have time to of course) and doing a match between two robots to demonstrate scoring.

If you can get just one person in that mall to say, "hey this is cool, I'd like to see more" then you will have won. That person will tell their friends.

But yah, as lukevanoort emphasized, use this as a multi-opportunity.

[dhitchco]

Another way to look at the problem of local "practice field" arena space is for your team to collaborate with the other teams in your area and time-share one facility.

make one field as a jointly-funded effort and then have both "open" and "closed" practice time slots so that you can use the facility with your team in secret and/or have open scrimmages.

As Kim poined out in earlier thread, liability insurance to use some neutral 3rd-party space (mall, warehouse, abandoned storefront) is a big issue as is setting up to get the utilities turned on, etc.

[Jay Trzaskos]

That would be an awesome opportunity Doug, but the closest team to Massena/Potsdam/Salmon River is a good one and a half hours away. To get to this mall is a half hour drive from Potsdam and Salmon River. I like lukevanoort and Eugenia's ideas on this. The only problem with drawing a crowd is that the store space we might be able to practice in is on the opposite side of the food court, and there are no open stores there. nobody ever ventures into that area and if they do, its only workers who are building the Super Wal-Mart going to get lunch. Amos, have you contacted the mall about this yet? if not I can look into it tonight. PM me if needed.

JT
229

[amos229]

No jay i havent, i was waiting to see what carn and ader thought. hopefully between you and i we can work together to get a practice area.

[AndyB]

i guess you could consider us on the luckier side:

we have the metal shop to build
we have the room next to the metal shop for miscellanious things (ie meetings, website, some programming)
we have an office outside that room used for electrical/programming
we have a computer lab accross the hall if we need it
and we use an elementary school gym/ high school library to practice

[amateurrobotguy]

Our schools has it pretty freaking sweet. Mainly since we are a rich school. We get some of the wood shop to work it(70 feet by 60 feet?)(No teacher found to teach it after 1st year open, so it is vacant). Dumb student council(AKA Poster Making Club) gets the rest, but we use their space when they aren't there. It really peeves us(keeping it PG-13) when their posters spill into OUR space :mad: . Perfect to build stuff in oviously. It has a large sliding metal door to connect us to a nice sized parking lot and the school's dumpsters. Nice chainlink cage to lock the bot up in(20 feetx15 feet). 4 tables, 3 computers, 2 drill presses(bolted to the cement floor , so we can't move them :mad: ) and a patridge and a pear tree

[Nuttyman54]

yeah i'd say you're lucky, We've got the hallway of the science wing (100 sq feet) to:

-House our 1 horizontal bandsaw, one vertical bandsaw and drill press
-our robots (including the one we will build)
-our extra parts/kit stuff

needless to say it's tight...

and we can practice driving outside in the parking lot when it's not raining

[PaPPy]

team 69 is lucky enough to have enought space in one of our schools to build a complete full size field every year

[newgrl101]

Quote: "There is not a mall close to our team. We use our schools gym if it is open if it is not we use the hall way."

Doesn't that ruin the gym floors? Do you guys put carpet under the robot's path because the surfaces changes a lot in driving.