How to find a new Build Space.

[weaversam8]

So, the company providing our build space is moving out, and we can't use their new office. Anybody got any good ideas for looking for a new build space?

[Christopher149]

I've never had to be closely involved with a move, but here are some thoughts:

*How much money might you have to rent space?
*Can you set up shop in a school?
*Is there something like a strip mall in your area with empty space at a reasonable cost?
*Any similar companies in the area?
*Anyone willing to donate part of their house (garage, basement, etc)?

[DonRotolo]

The simple response is "ask".

If you are school-based, ask there first. Even if you can only get space for 'clean' work (programming, design, non-technical, awards, etc) it solves part of the problem. (Hm, try this even if you're NOT school-based. Schools often will allow community activities. And think of elementary schools and colleges too).

Also think of public facilities, like a town rec center, senior citizen center (the old folks would love it!), library (maybe not the chop saw) or town hall/center.

If it's home-school, or a community-based team, private homes are a good choice. You'd be surprised how useful a 2-car garage can be, even in January.

How was the space you had found?

Also, speak with every parent. They might work for a company with space, or know someone with space. (We do this for fund-raising. You might be surprised how many companies will donate a few hundred dollars to the team)

I think the best advice is to be diligent and persistent, 'no stone unturned' and all that.

[brennonbrimhall]

What is your team used to? What resources did you previous space afford your team? What are you looking for in a new space?

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

If you are school-based, ask there first. Even if you can only get space for 'clean' work (programming, design, non-technical, awards, etc) it solves part of the problem. (Hm, try this even if you're NOT school-based. Schools often will allow community activities. And think of elementary schools and colleges too).

To corroborate Don's advice, there are a few teams in my area that work almost exclusively at schools.

To my knowledge, 20 has always worked out of the high school, which adds up to a staggering 23 years. As a part of the arrangement, they're technically a high school club with a booster club, like a sports team.

250 works at their school too, but are not directly affiliated with it. Their arrangement falls under the community activities umbrella. My understanding is that they would normally have to rent out the space, but since the activity directly benefits the school's students, the school is a sponsor and waives the rental fee.

[Foster]

Send a note to Clem1640. In the 10 years that Sab-bot-age has been in existence they have always had a space problem. (One year in a unused horse barn!) He can give you what they have done to track down space.

But I'll follow up "DonRotolo:The simple response is "ask"." Ask everyone / everyplace / everybody you can find. You never know what the response will be. As Mom used to say "If you don't ask, the answer is always no."

[Libby K]

Feel free to PM me. 1923 moves each year through a partnership with a commercial realtor who lends the team unused retail space in shopping center. At first it seemed inconvenient, but now that we've been in spaces like this for 4 seasons we realize that building 'in a fishbowl' in the middle of town has helped us immensely with our outreach & team growth goals.

We're in the middle of writing grants for permanent space purchases, but even the temporary space works for us. It's been an awesome way to get build space AND tell our community all about FIRST. It's led our team to grow from 20 students to over 100, with several FLL and FTC teams to help feed the team. The build space becomes 'command central' for robotics activities in our town, and we're wicked proud to share our plans with anyone who wants some info.

[Kingland093]

As has been said before, try your school first(if you're school based).
4215 uses 3 science classrooms (for build, programming, marketing), then for driving practice, our school has a really large atrium room thing that we use. However, we don't have room for machines. Instead, we have a local machine shop make our parts for us.
Also, try private houses, or see if any of your sponsors have any room they would let you use.

[jpetito]

This suggestion is pretty horrible but may turn to your benefit- find a local school that's gotten rid of one or more shop classes, and ask to use the "old" shop facility. It s***s to have to put that out there. So many schools in my area (California) have disposed of technical/vocational education that the facilities are standing around empty, or made into wrestling rooms or black-box theaters. A few still have equipment bolted to the floor (educators for the most part can't tell the difference between a band saw and a TIG welder...).

[Katie_UPS]

When Neutrino lost our build space we recouped by:
-Reaching out to our local 4-H branch, who had space we could use to store what we had
-Talking to the local University (and you can talk to your local tech college, university, community college, etc) who let us use their machine shop.

For us, the partnerships were pretty beneficial for the team (and hopefully for 4h and ISU).