What size building or store do you need? When planning your retail store, the amount of selling space will be one of the most important factors in selecting a location. It is can also be one of the most difficult to determine.

As with any new business, most of your assumptions will be based on industry research and comparing similar stores operating in similar locations. To get an estimate on how much selling space your store must have, divide the planned sales volume by your industry's sales per square foot.

Sales Volume Sales per Square Foot = Selling Space

Let's say you believe your proposed book store will do $250,000 per year in sales and market data says the average sales-per-square-foot in a book store is $150. By plugging those numbers into our formula, the amount of selling space you will need is approximately 1666 square feet.

Besides selling space, remember to factor in extra square feet for an office area, stockroom, storage, and/or bathrooms. Although you may want room to grow, keep the size of the building close to your store's needs. A big store takes more inventory to fill and an empty looking store may not attract customers.

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What Size Building or Store Do I Need? - Calculating Retail ...

by WBDG Staff

Last updated: 06-02-2009

The Joint Use Retail space types are stores used for the sale of products and services. Joint Use Retail space types may include news and book stands, flower shops, convenience stores, travel agencies, credit unions, dry cleaning services, shoe shine stands, barber and beauty shops, print shops, courier mail shops, retail of clothing or other hard goods, and similar applications.

Features that are not included in this space type are: dry cleaning services, cashier windows, vaults, built-in safes, drive-through windows, or pneumatic tube systems, barber and beauty shops, and print shops. Some types of leased spaces may be more characteristic of other space types, such as offices for insurance agencies (Office) and pharmacies (Health Care).

Unique to Joint Use Retail space types is the integration of aesthetics into the entrances, windows, and retail areas within the space that help designate the space as commercial, and that can be easily distinguished from areas of the space that are accessible only to retail employees. Typical features of Joint Use Retail space types include the list of applicable design objectives elements as outlined below. For a complete list and definitions of the design objectives within the context of whole building design, click on the titles below.

The following building program is representative of Joint Use Retail space types.

JOINT USE RETAIL

The following diagram illustrates representative tenant plans.

For GSA, the unit costs for Joint Use Retail space types are based on the construction quality and design features in the following table (PDF 52 KB, 4 pgs). This information is based on GSA's benchmark interpretation and could be different for other owners.

The following agencies and organizations have developed codes and standards affecting the design of Joint Use Retail space types. Note that the codes and standards are minimum requirements. Architects, engineers, and consultants should consider exceeding the applicable requirements whenever possible.

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Joint Use Retail | Whole Building Design Guide

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You may be familiar with the ENERGY STAR label on energy efficient heating and cooling equipment, but did you know there are also Quality Installation (QI) guidelines to help ensure that heating and cooling equipment is installed properly? Nearly half of all heating and cooling equipment in U.S. homes never performs to its advertised capacity and efficiency due to incorrect installation, which means homeowners pay higher operating costs over the life of the equipment.

The ENERGY STAR QI program helps homeowners identify contractors who install heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment to the QI guidelines. By purchasing high efficiency equipment and having it properly installed, a homeowner can lower their energy bills, increase comfort in their home, and extend the useful life of their equipment.

The ENERGY STAR QI program requires a local sponsor, such as an electric or gas utility. For more information on ENERGY STAR QI program in your area, contact your local sponsor. But even if your utility does not yet offer an ENERGY STAR QI program, you may be able to find local contractors who follow some of the Quality Installation procedures. Use the Bid Comparison Checklist (350KB) to help find the right contractor for you.

When your new heating and cooling equipment is installed to meet ENERGY STAR Quality Installation Guidelines, you avoid common installation problems that can reduce the efficiency of your home. These improvements to efficiency can reduce your heating and cooling costs by as much as 30%.

ENERGY STAR Quality Installation Guidelines, are based on the Air Conditioning Contractors of America's (ACCA) HVAC Quality Installation Specification, and is recognized as an American National Standard. These industry best practices help ensure that your new equipment is:

Whether you are installing a new system or replacing existing heating and cooling equipment, installing equipment properly is essential to getting the best performance.

Estimated savings potential with QI ranges from 18% to 36% for air conditioners and heat pumps and 11% to 18% for furnaces.

The charts below show the losses in typical residential HVAC systems. Quality installations help deliver the equipment's full potential.

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ENERGY STAR Quality Installation : ENERGY STAR

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The installation of geothermal heating and cooling requires an interior heat pump and outside piping to collect the heat. For water source heat pumps, water from a well is piped to the heat pump and then injected into a second well or spilled into a creek or ditch. For ground source heat pumps, a water-based antifreeze mixture is pumped through pipes buried in the ground and circulated through the heat pump. Both types of heat pump require more ducting for forced-air heating than conventional furnaces.

Calculate the size of heat pump required. If you are replacing an existing furnace, it will have a Btu rating. If it is a new installation, a survey of the heat requirements of the house must be carried out. The heat pump will have either a Btu rating or it will have a coefficient of performance (COP) and an energy input in Btu. Multiply the energy input by the COP to get the heat output. Match the heat requirements of the house as closely as possible, taking into consideration that the heat requirements of a new house increase as insulation sags and door and window seals age.

Choose a ground source or water source heat pump by looking at the possibility of drilling wells or digging long, 6-foot-deep ditches in your area. Water source heat pumps require a well which will yield about 5 gallons per minute but a second well is often required to absorb this amount of water. Wells take up little space but are usually the more expensive option.

Ground source heat pumps use pipes buried deep in the ground as a heat source. Vertical shafts as for a well are an option if there is little space and no water. The least expensive solution is usually to bury piping 6 feet deep in the ground but this requires about half an acre of land and ground which can be excavated. One of these solutions will be the least expensive and most appropriate for your project.

Drill the well or vertical shafts or bury the ground source piping as per the heat pump manufacturer's instructions. Water source heat pumps have fewer specific requirements for the water circulating in and out of the heat pump but make sure the required volume is available. The water hardness is also important to minimize scaling.

The requirements for the ground source heat pump are more particular. Manufacturers will usually specify the water based mixture, the size and type of pipe, the spacing, the depth at which it must be buried and the back-fill procedure. Most home owners use qualified installers to carry out this work.

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Marissa Robert graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English language and literature. She has extensive experience writing marketing campaigns and business handbooks and manuals, as well as doing freelance writing, proofreading and editing. While living in France she translated manuscripts into English. She has published articles on various websites and also periodically maintains two blogs.

Geothermal heating is making great strides into commonplace usage in this day of increased environmental awareness. Whether you want to have a smaller impact on the environment or you want lower energy bills, consider replacing your less efficient forced air system with a geothermal heating system. It requires a larger up front investment than traditional heating systems do, but it pays for itself in the savings you see on your heating bills within a few years.

How to Install Geothermal Heating & Cooling Systems. Geothermal heating is making great strides into commonplace usage in this day of increased...

Geothermal heating and cooling systems are based on the temperature differential between an underground source and a building to be heated or...

The installation of geothermal heating and cooling requires an interior heat pump and outside piping to collect the heat. For water source...

How to Install Geothermal Heating & Cooling Systems. Geothermal heating is making great strides into commonplace usage in this day of increased...

How to Install Geothermal Home Heating Systems. Geothermal heat pumps were first developed in the 1940s. ... How to Install Geothermal Heating...

Closed loop geothermal heat pump systems take advantage of the consistent geothermal temperature to mitigate heating and cooling costs. Some geothermal heat...

Renewable energy technologies are enjoying a huge surge in popularity. Ground source heat exchanges, in particular, are on the rise. A few...

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How to Install Geothermal Heating & Cooling Systems | eHow

An office is generally a room or other area where administrative work is done, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it (see officer, office-holder, official); the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the term "office" may refer to business-related tasks. In legal writing, a company or organization has offices in any place that it has an official presence, even if that presence consists of, for example, a storage silo rather than an office.

An office is an architectural and design phenomenon; whether it is a small office such as a bench in the corner of a small business of extremely small size (see small office/home office), through entire floors of buildings, up to and including massive buildings dedicated entirely to one company. In modern terms an office usually refers to the location where white-collar workers are employed.

The structure and shape of the office is impacted by both management thought as well as construction materials and may or may not have walls or barriers. The word stems from the Latin officium, and its equivalents in various, mainly romance, languages. An officium was not necessarily a place, but rather an often mobile 'bureau' in the sense of a human staff or even the abstract notion of a formal position, such as a magistrature. The relatively elaborate Roman bureaucracy would not be equaled for centuries in the West after the fall of Rome, even partially reverting to illiteracy, while the East preserved a more sophisticated administrative culture, both under Byzantium and under Islam.

Offices in classical antiquity were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. There was usually a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. Ancient texts mentioning the work of scribes allude to the existence of such "offices". These rooms are sometimes called "libraries" by some archaeologists and the general press because one often associates scrolls with literature. In fact they were true offices since the scrolls were meant for record keeping and other management functions such as treaties and edicts, and not for writing or keeping poetry or other works of fiction.

The High Middle Ages (10001300) saw the rise of the medieval chancery, which was usually the place where most government letters were written and where laws were copied in the administration of a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference, a precursor to the book shelf. The introduction of printing during the Renaissance did not change these early government offices much.

Pre-industrial illustrations such as paintings or tapestries often show us personalities or eponyms in their private offices, handling record keeping books or writing on scrolls of parchment. All kinds of writings seemed to be mixed in these early forms of offices. Before the invention of the printing press and its distribution there was often a very thin line between a private office and a private library since books were read or written in the same space at the same desk or table, and general accounting and personal or private letters were also done there.

It was during the 13th century that the English form of the word first appeared when referring to a position involving duties (ex. the office of the ...). Geoffrey Chaucer appears to have first used the word in 1395 to mean a place where business is transacted in The Canterbury Tales.

As mercantilism became the dominant economic theory of the Renaissance, merchants tended to conduct their business in the same buildings, which might include retail sales, warehousing and clerical work. During the 15th century, population density in many cities reached the point where stand-alone buildings were used by merchants to conduct their business, and there was a developing a distinction between church, government/military and commerce uses for buildings.[1]

The Industrial Revolution (18th and 19th century) saw the rise of banking, railroads, insurance, retailing, oil, and the telegraph industries. To transact business, an increasing large number of clerks were needed to handle order-processing, accounting, and file documents, with increasingly specialized office space required to house these activities. Most of the desks of the era were top heavy with paper storage bins extending above the desk-work area, giving the appearance of a cubicle and offering the workers some degree of privacy.

The relative high price of land in the central core of cities lead to the first multi-story buildings, which were limited to about 10 stories until the use of iron and steel allowed for higher structures. The invention of the safety elevator in 1852 by Elisha Otis saw the rapid escalation upward of buildings.[1] By the end of the 19th century, larger office buildings frequently contained large glass atriums to allow light into the complex and improve air circulation.

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Office - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

by Brian Conway The Planning Site, LLC

Last updated: 07-22-2010

In the words of office design consultant and author Francis Duffy, "The office building is one of the great icons of the twentieth century. Office towers dominate the skylines of cities in every continent [As] the most visible index of economic activity, of social, technological, and financial progress, they have come to symbolize much of what this century has been about."

This is true because the office building is the most tangible reflection of a profound change in employment patterns that has occurred over the last one hundred years. In present-day America, northern Europe, and Japan, at least 50 percent of the working population is employed in office settings as compared to 5 percent of the population at the beginning of the 20th century.

Federal BuildingOakland, CA (Courtesy of Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz )

Interestingly, the life-cycle cost distribution for a typical service organization is about 3 to 4 percent for the facility, 4 percent for operations, 1 percent for furniture, and 90 to 91 percent for salaries. As such, if the office structure can leverage the 3 to 4 percent expenditure on facilities to improve the productivity of the workplace, it can have a very dramatic effect on personnel contributions representing the 90 to 91 percent of the service organization's costs.

To accomplish this impact, the buildings must benefit from an integrated design approach that focuses on meeting a list of objectives. Through integrated design, a new generation of high-performance office buildings is beginning to emerge that offers owners and users increased worker satisfaction and productivity, improved health, greater flexibility, and enhanced energy and environmental performance. Typically, these projects apply life-cycle analysis to optimize initial investments in architectural design, systems selection, and building construction.

An office building must have flexible and technologically-advanced working environments that are safe, healthy, comfortable, durable, aesthetically-pleasing, and accessible. It must be able to accommodate the specific space and equipment needs of the tenant. Special attention should be made to the selection of interior finishes and art installations, particularly in entry spaces, conference rooms and other areas with public access.

An office building incorporates a number of space types to meet the needs of staff and visitors. These may include:

Typical features of Office Buildings include the list of applicable design objectives elements as outlined below. For a complete list and definitions of the design objectives within the context of whole building design, click on the titles below.

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Office Building | Whole Building Design Guide

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Office Building: A commercial building used primarily for business administrative operations. Office building operations are frequently co-located with other business functions, such as warehousing, retail, call centers or data centers or manufacturing. These administrative facilities frequently serve as corporate headquarters or business centers, and as such must meet strict aesthetic as well as functional design requirements.

The term "office building" covers a wide range of commercial facilities. In many cases, these buildings serve as corporate or regional headquarters - like the Pizza Inn Corporate Headquarters or the American Paint Horse Association building. These administrative facilities require a polished, professional finish-out to ensure the building presents the right image for the tenant. Many office buildings have very specific requirements; for example, the LTV Building required extensive security features and standards to ensure the protection of classified information, and Corinthian College needed a particular interior design to support highly automated classrooms. In other cases, the offices are built into the same structure as other functions, as in the case of the Col-Met Spray Booths or the Mary Kay Cosmetics Office / Warehouse. Regardless the type of administrative building needed, Bob Moore Construction has extensive experience in building office construction projects that meet the tenant's specific needs.

If you are interested in building an office building or would like more information, please contact Mark McLeod, Kyle Whitesell or Larry Knox at (817)640-1200. Or if you prefer, contact us online with our contact form.

Below is a list of office construction projects by Bob Moore Construction. Other types of buildings, including call centers, warehouses, distribution centers, industrial buildings, retail stores, flex / tech buildings, data centers and manufacturing facilities are listed on separate pages.

Pioneer 360 Business Center Arlington, Texas 1,164,000 SF Owner / Developer : Flaherty Development Role : General Contractor Building Type : Warehouse / Distribution Center / Flex / Tech / Office Architect : Alliance Architects

Pinnacle Park Phase I and II Dallas, Texas 955,000 SF Owner / Developer : Argent Property Company Role : General Contractor Building Type : Office / Warehouse Architect : Pross Design Group

First Garland Business Center I & II Garland, Texas 944,000 SF Owner / Developer : First Industrial Trust Role : Design / Build Contractor Building Type : Office / Warehouse Architect : Hardy McCullah/MLM Architects, Inc.

Frankford Trade Center Building VI Carrollton, Texas 659,000 SF Owner / Developer : Argent Property Company Role : General Contractor Building Type : Office / Warehouse Architect : Pross Design Group

Frankford Trade Center Building VII Carrollton, Texas 659,000 SF Owner / Developer : Argent Property Company Role : General Contractor Building Type : Office / Warehouse Architect : Pross Design Group

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