Our robotics team has recently been allowed to use a gym from an elementary school that has shut down as a robotics center. This was only supposed to be temporary, but after several school board meetings and some compromising with the senior center our team has been allowed to stay in the gym permanently.

Our "robotics center" has two bathrooms and a small storage room along with the gym. We were recently given a full-size playing field (27 by 54 feet) and that takes up roughly half of the gym (I don't know the exact size of the gym, but the short side of the carpet takes up about half the gym and the long side takes up about 3 quarters, so I'm very roughly estimating 80 feet by 40 feet of gym space. Our storage room is about 10 feet by 20 feet).

Basically, we have six areas in the gym of our robotics center. One corner is administration (about 10 feet by 10 feet) (right as you walk in). The corner next to the administration area (bathrooms and the storage area is located between these corners) is a smaller administration area and safety area (also about 10 feet by 10 feet). The corner opposite to that is the programming/drivers station corner(about 10 feet by 15 feet) (the field is between these two corners, against the wall longways). The build area (about 15 by 15 feet) is in the corner between the administration corner and programming corner. A collection of desks and chairs is between the build corner and administration corner close to the field (used for lunches, full team meetings, lobby area, etc.)

We still go to our high school to machine parts and draw on CAD, but most of the work during the season was done at the gym. Most of the gym is used for driving, building, and programming. We have plenty of storage space as of right now, but it all depends on how much stuff you have (old robots, scrap metal, toolboxes, carts, etc.) and if you want to have a full field. Only robotics kids are allowed at the center as of right now (the senior center has been allowed to use the rest of the school so I hope they will be allowed to come see our part of the building). Overall, it's a good deal considering we sometimes didn't get building permits for the high school for the right days (very important during build season).

If you have any questions about our center you can ask my coach, Debbie May. We have a Facebook page (BX 1023) and a website (bedfordexpress.org) if you have any questions. I'm so pleased to hear that there are more teams that are getting seperate robotics places! Good luck to your team!