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Lobby stairs to second floor, how is the square footage calculated?

Guy Foresman: Think It By Hand; October 24, 2019

Hi David,

We have an industrial building of office and manufacturing on both the first and second floors. The building is for a single tenant. The Lobby area has a large staircase that you can take to get to the second floor offices and manufacturing areas. My thought is that the square footage of the lobby area and the square footage of the staircase should be calculated into the total square footage of the building. Do you have a document that explains the calculation? If you do, that would be helpful to receive at guy@thinkitbyhand.com or a call at (949) 275-0615.

Thank you,
Guy Foresman

David Fingret: Extreme Measures Inc.; October 24, 2019

Hi Guy,

The area of the lobby on the ground floor should be included, but it sounds like the stairs themselves are within a Building Void and therefore they would be excluded from the calculation when using Gross Area 1. The BOMA standards are available for purchase from www.boma.org

thanks,
David