- Domionic Tremblay
- Interlope Multimedia
- March 24, 2023
I'm using the BOMA Office standard to calculate areas of an office tower that has a food court on an underground level. I think that the area of the food court (circulation, tables, etc.) should not be part of the building common area because all tenants should not have to "pay" for all this area that is accessible to the public. Am I correct in this assumption? Should I define a large area called "food court" and treat this as another tenant with its share of common areas? And if so, should all the small restaurants be part or this "food court" tenant or be isolated tenants? I know that boma 2017 adresses this by providing spaces that are shared by only a group of tenants, but I am using BOMA 96 and BOMA 2010.
Thank you for your answer
- David Fingret
- Extreme Measures Inc.
- March 27, 2023
Hi Domionic,
BOMA 2010 actually does allow you to perform very similar calculations to the Inter-Building Areas found in BOMA 2017. BOMA 2010 mentions this feature as "Limited, Campus, or Complex Service and Amenity Areas", but doesn't give much instruction on how to actually perform the calculations (We would use the BOMA 2017 method). Applying the concept of "Limited Area" would allow you to allocate the food court common areas to the food court tenants only.
The only other real option under BOMA 2010 is to allocate the area as a Building Service Area. You could always then apply a cap to the Load Factor under BOMA 2010 on a floor-by-floor basis, if the result of including the food court makes the Load Factor too high.
Under BOMA 1996 you don't really have any other options, unless you just omit the area completely and add some disclaimer(s) to your documentation. Excluding space is usually less problematic than including questionable space as it will have no negative impact on tenant rentable areas to simply exclude the space altogether, but keep in mind, that it won't be in full compliance of the standard if you do omit space.
Thanks,
David