Building Amenity Areas

Ed Duff: Caddraft Illustrators; December 10, 2012

I am currently completing an Area Survey on a new office building that has a fitness centre on the main floor, provided by the landlord for the use of all tenant employees.

Looking at Chart 3 (pg. 13), Building Amenity Areas (col. I) are totaled with the Occupant Areas (col. H) to yield the Usable Areas for a given a floor. This neither makes the area a Floor Service & Amenity Area or a Building Service Area & Amenity area. It only serves to reduce the R/U Ratio for that particular floor, thereby skewing the Rentable Areas for all tenants.

I have set up 3 different 'what-if' spreadsheets placing the fitness area as either floor amenity area (col. L), Building Service Area (col. K) or future Occupant Area (col. H). The result is that the tenant rentable areas in neither of the 'what-ifs' matches the Chart 3 formulas.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance,
Ed Duff

David Fingret: Extreme Measures Inc.; December 11, 2012

Hi Ed,

The purpose of this forum is to help the public with understanding the concepts of the various BOMA measuring standards and to help interpret the standards in situations not specifically covered in the official publications.

Your post is asking us to help you calculate the chart. I can assure you that the calculations work if you do them right, so if something is not adding up, then the answer is "yes" - you are missing something!

I can say that generally, a fitness centre should not be floor amenity area, unless it only serves tenants on that floor (very unusual) and not building service area. It should be building amenity area or occupant area if it is the landlord's intention to convert it to occupant area one day.

As building amenity area, it will be grossed-up by floor amenity area (just like building common area was grossed up by floor common area in the BOMA 1996 standard). This is why building amenity area and occupant areas are added up together to make up the usable area of the floor.

I hope this helps.

Ed Duff: Caddraft Illustrators; December 12, 2012

David, thanks for your reply.

The fact that Building Amenity Areas, unlike Building Service Areas, are still grossed up by the floor R/U was the missing 'something'. I should have reread the definitions of R/O & R/U ratio!

Not seeing that gross-up area in column N of the sample, led me to believe that the area was in limbo, when in actual fact the exclusion allows that column total to be used to calculate the R/O and the gross-up to still take place in the background.

Thanks again for the clarification.

Ed