CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
'Rupert Murdoch is demanding twice as many cycle spaces'
(5 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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"“This is virgin territory,” says Mark McAlister of Colliers, who helped let the 428,000 sq ft The Place to News UK."
Not sure the boss of Sky is pleased to hear that!
Posted 11 years ago # -
That should give other developers pause for thought — the thought being “how much valuable rentable space do I have to give up to accommodate these pesky cyclists?”
Nice positive angle there from the Standard.
Posted 11 years ago # -
The article doesn't make much sense.
Mass demand for office space with cycle parking attached means it attracts higher rents than undesirable office space without cycle parking. You can't just average out the country's commercial rents and do sums with the footage like this:
Let’s say office floors rent at £50 a square foot and cycle space at £25, and that each bike takes up 20 square feet. The annual loss of rental income per bike is therefore £500.
Our office is circa 8000 square feet. Imagine it attracts a £5/sq ft premium from shower and bike parking facilities - that's £40k extra.
Even if we accept at face value that bike parking spaces 'cost' £500, you'd need to be providing 80 parking spaces before you made a loss. As we have 90 staff, that's the equivalent of Rupert Murdoch fitting 2600 bike parking spaces.
Further, one particularly weak assumption they make is that bike parking spaces are provided instead of prime office space. I've never been to an office where that is the case. Perhaps instead of a £50/ft premium serviced office space, the maximum achievable rent of bike parking areas is only that of £35/ft mediocre office space, so the loss is much smaller than suggested.
It's also worth pointing out the obvious, that a standard car parking bay in the UK is getting on for 300 square feet. Murdoch's asking them to find around 16 extra car parking spaces on a site that will house 3000. Not so newsworthy now!
Posted 11 years ago # -
Over 50% of the available land at our offices is given over to car parking (when you consider we have a basement car park too, it's probably around 65%). And we still don't "have enough" parking spaces. Apparently. Must be quite a financial drain to have such inneficient use of prime commercial land.
Posted 11 years ago #
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