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]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

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.

More Pictures: 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]

Originally Posted by Josh Murphy

....Our school gives us 5 rooms to use at our own terms and that is all the rooms are dedicated...

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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).