Poll - Space Rental

Exactly - at that price the hobby/household project maker is probably going to suffer through hauling their stuff to and from DMS for the one or two weekends a month they are at DMS. The hobby/project maker is probably not going to use the tools enough to frustrate other makers. I thought DMS wanted to discourage businesses from setting up at DMS and using tools heavily but it seems like storage costs will only make sense for people with a business. I don’t really care either way - if DMS can find people who will pay that much and fund the expansion then I think that’s awesome.

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I tell you what. Initially I had my reservation about renting a spot. However the more I thought about it, the more it would make sense to me.
If you put it in the context, now I can build a bike & have a place to store it while building. That money put into that spot would give me reasons to keep working on it. If I had a spot at home to build it would likely get procrastinated. When you assign monetary value to get something done, it tends to get done quicker.

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This has been one of the points I’ve been trying to make about project storage for years - it’s simply too cheap for the user, thus the tendency is to use it for months on end. The cost of having to show up at a storage meeting - or have someone proxy on your behalf - doesn’t seem to encourage efficiency. The cost doesn’t have to be monetary - just something that strongly encourages “as needed” use for in-process materials as opposed to the accumulation and intermediate-term storage I saw so much of.

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Does DMS pay CAM , Tax, and insurance on the space? Just thinking if those cost were broke down within in the space charge it would make so much more sense than just saying 300.00 rent

Rent is-
Cam is-
Ins is-
Re tax is-
Total for space =

Ins

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Oh, you omitted the minor expense of buying a house to put your shed up in. :wink: and being harassed by the busybody HOA self-appointed street monitor!

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Storage shed project

Yes, we do, but they are lumped together into one Operating Expenses amount. The Common Area Maintenance, Property Tax, and property insurance are about 24% of the total.

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I agree with this wholeheartedly.19,20

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I’d prefer we had members pay for ALL project storage (but not the small personal storage). Ditch half of the pallet storage areas and make folks pay for the rest and increase the space for hand woodworking, etc.

FWIW, I have no storage at DMS, so I don’t have a dog in this fight.

As a price-point comparison, I am also a member of the much smaller Fort Collins Creator Hub in Colorado. They offer co-working space and have had some uptake on them. These are work areas with 4’ high walls separating them. No Cages, no special electrical runs.

Sizes and prices vary from 8’x8’ tp 10’x10’. Price for a 10x10 is $200/month, with a three month minimum and a discount for annual payment. This is for a makerspace with perhaps 50 members and a fraction of the tool functionality that the DMS has available.

As I recall ,the spaces they’ve rented have been taken up by a metal sculptor, a custom skateboard deck startup, and others, but not by individuals looking for storage for personal projects.

http://www.fortcollinscreatorhub.org/?page_id=1102

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What I’m hearing from this discussion is that the creation of “rentable workspaces” are likely to appeal to commercial users, not to our typical “maker members.”

The purpose of doing this would be more about using excess space to help fund the overall space for regular members, to keep their dues low and allow us to have the flexibility to reclaim this extra space should we later choose to expand into it. (similar to subleasing a portion of the new space to a 3rd party company for storage until we’re ready to use it)

There are likely people who would never consider joining today because they need a “place to keep their stuff.” They would jump at the chance to set up shop in a 24x7 location that has many tools available. $300 might even be a bargain to them. Are there similar places where people can rent studio space in the area?

Providing “below-market subsidized” spaces for existing members really wouldn’t be fair to the other members either, and the prices charged should definitely be in excess of the actual cost of the space, up to what the market will bear.

Personally I think it would be a disservice to membership if the board didn’t try to get some additional income from any unused space, as long as the use didn’t interfere or cause issues with the current membership. Constructing 4’ ply walls to separate the spaces and create some definition would also be cheap and easy.

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I would pay for project storage (At a reasonable rate), but I doubt I would ever pay for work space. I have never been able to claim a project storage space. They have all been full since I joined, or the single space I found was too small for my needs (18" wide with a need for 24").

I feel that renting out the extra space as described above would mostly appeal to commercial “members or entities” and seems to go against the space’s rules of not operating a business out of the space.

If we are going to be hurting that much for extra money with renting the property next door, I would encourage we adjust dues, market to raise membership, and/or charge reasonable rates for project storage. I imagine there are other ways we can put that extra space to use, and possibly even make some money off of it.

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A space that someone could use for a project that is perpetually on the free project storeage would open up said spot if we had the paid option.

We would need to be more strict on the policies of free project storage extensions, like if someone was taking up two large spots on the pallet racks for 4 months (that’s 3 extensions) they should probably be turned down for the next extension and told they are abusing the free spots.

This of course opens us up to accusations of favoritism, and then not giving extensions to push people towards paying. Which would quickly burn out the chairperson

Charging a fee after x amount of time could be a solution for freeing up storage space, for instance storage is free for the first month but then $20/mo (again as an example) after that it would encourage people to finish their projects or move them. It could even be scaling, the longer you leave it there the more it would cost you. Is there currently a ceiling on how many extensions one can be granted?

Depends on the current chairperson and how well you can roll on charisma. Then add your clout bonus/debuff.

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13 posts were merged into an existing topic: Commercial Use of DMS?

We don’t have any such explicit rules. One such rule was proposed for Board members and board-appointed Officers (i.e. President, Secretary, Treasurer) at the last board meeting, but it did not pass.

Otherwise, here are the rules on commercial use:

Commercial Use
  1. The Dallas Makerspace is based on open source ideals and thus encourages its membership to embrace those ideals as well, however members reserve the rights to all of their creations.
  2. DMS may invoice members for incurring costs to DMS significantly in excess of their monthly dues. Determination of excess to be submitted by Committee Chairs and the member billed by resolution of the Board.

The first rule has been around as long as I’ve been a member (2015). The second was added simply to deal with egregious cases; I’m not familiar with any invoices presented to members via Board resolution under this provision.

The issue with strict project storage rules is that of administrative burden that scales with the strictness. And by ‘administrative burden’ I essentially mean ‘shlepping infringing projects to the penalty box and/or dumpster’ and ‘Members contesting published policy with the Logistics Committee’.

Automation is desperately needed to both reduce this burden, deliver consistency to all users, and produce some hard data on usage patterns.

I will emphatically agree that project storage is a prime contributor to Logistics Committee Chair/member burnout.

During my tenure the first 3 months were free, the subsequent 3 months were subject to scrutiny, and at 6 months it was leaving the facility one way or another. Criteria for the last 3 months were essentially how successful you were at convincing the Logistics Chair that you were putting real time in on the project and were likely to remove it under your own initiative.

I can’t speak to how it’s been implemented in the ~13 months since I stepped down as Logistics chair.

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It’s not 300 it’s 900 because you’re imposing a minimum. At that point you’re charging like a craft guild not a makerspace. Amenities offered for that price aren’t commiserate. I’d also look at grad school space structures. I know UNT monetized by leasing offices within their labs

Edited…for example if I’m paying 900 a month aND my primary area I like to use is metal shop I expect my bay to be IN metal so I don’t have to schlep to my favorite tools. Perhaps in fired arts I lease a private wheel or something. Maybe instead of cubicles we can do premium storage/tools.

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Ste 104, current location is 16, 575 gross sf, 102 is 19,425 net sf

In this discussion of storage and individual workspace, where do we consider those for whom it is less of a convenience, more of a necessity? I’m thinking of members whose mobility is significantly impaired. We do have members in wheelchairs or who use assistance like a cane.

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I think we need to be thinking about storage in 2 different ways.

The first one is “general member project/supply storage.” This serves to provide a convenience to members so that they don’t have to constantly move their project and supplies to and from the space while working on it.

The second is “Workplace and or more extensive personal storage” that would provide more extensive storage for larger items, more items, and/or a dedicated workspace."

I absolutely believe that the first is needed - and especially needed for those who have limited mobility. We should even reserve some of our storage spaces at ground level for those people exclusively. I also believe that low cost/free storage is a very nice amenity for general members. BUT, I believe that usage needs to be tightly regulated/monitored so that everyone can participate in using a limited resource. That includes a limit on time that you get a storage space, an effective queue that allocates available space to the next in line (a right of first refusal queue for new spaces) and rapidly increasing fees if you continue to need to keep the space for a longer time. (you could get in line for the next available space, and if one is available, you get it for free again).

The 2nd type for larger space rental is only if we have the unused space available and we want to use it to raise funds to benefit the larger membership. I’m not so concerned about the impact of those users on the overall space or tool usage. They could just as easily be members not renting space heavily using the tools too. The committees should have policies/procedures/methods in place to deal with “excessive usage” by members and should be able to deal with it as they see fit. For example, nothing says they couldn’t decide that “usage of tool X is allowed for Y hours/month, but anything beyond that should be paid at $Z/hr.”

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