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This help desk is a free resource intended for discussion purposes only. Neither BOMA, its chapters, affiliates, or Extreme Measures Inc.® are responsible for the information, comments or opinions expressed herein. For complete information, refer to the official publications of the standards themselves.

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Excluding a basement floor

ELisabeth Palmer
Interprise Design
August 30, 2018

Hello,

We have a building owner who would like to exclude a basement floor from the overall calculations/chart. Would they be allowed to do so. The floor has the loading dock and many other building service areas as well as tenant storage (that is charged on a flat fee basis, not $/RSF).

Please advise.

Thank you,
Elisabeth

David Fingret
Extreme Measures Inc.
August 30, 2018

Hi Elisabeth,

The standard does require all enclosed areas of the building to be measured. BOMA does not support modifying the standard, but if you need to omit the floor, I would ensure that it doesn't have a negative impact on other occupants in the building. When you omit Building Service Areas, the rentable area decreases, so it's likely that excluding the basement will be favorable to the tenants. However, if you are removing tenant area, then this may have a negative impact as more Building Service Area would be proportionately allocated to the remaining tenants. Any modifications should be noted in all documentation referencing the areas calculated in the Global Summary of Areas, so that all parties involved are aware of the situation. If the purpose of excluding the basement is an effort to lower the Load Factor in the building, we would strongly recommend using the Capped Load Factor feature of the standard.

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