Okay so things are gathering pace with the Co-Working Belfast initiative, here’s a little round-up of what happened this week;
- Andy registered a domain for Co-Working Belfast.
- Andy booked a viewing for the potential space he found.
- We went to visit the office on Bradbury Place.
- We found a couple of other spots that didn’t quite meet the criteria on a second walk around the Botanic / University area.
- We put an offer in for the space (see below).
- Darryl from Banjax gave us a load of advice, info on what people to contact about funding and even invited Brendan McGoran from Belfast City Council to the next open coffee meetup.
- We visited Blick Studios and met with the studio manager Christine James, we had a good chat and have a potential space if getting somewhere larger doesn’t work out.
The Potential Space
The advertised vital statistics are as follows;
- 1900 (sqft)
- Rent at £8.50 (per sqft)
- Rent is therefore £16,150 p.a.
- Rates 2008/2009 £6,873
- Service charge (unknown)
- To be refurbished pending lease finalisation
After viewing the space it is definitely in need of a good bit of love so we made what I think is a fair offer, along with some extra conditions;
- At the lessor’s cost, an architect to visit the property to asses what if any walls could be removed to make the individual offices larger.
- Re-paint walls and ceilings with a clean, matte white finish.
- Laminate wood flooring laid in the office areas.
The offer itself £10,000 p.a. for a 3 year lease. Some light mathematics and it’s going to take around £60,000 over the next three years to make this a reality. I think we can do it.
Next Steps
So, the list I published at the end of last month we’ve managed to cross some things off and there are couple of things I would love to ask you to do, if you can answer any of these questions. Please leave a comment!
- Do you want a desk at Co-Working Belfast?
- What about just being able to drop in and use spare facilities?
- Would you be willing to put your money where your mouth is and chip in for the deposit?
- If we said it was going to be up and running next month… are you in?
- Can you provide any desks, chairs, monitors, computers?
- Do you have any good funding leads?
- Can you help in any way that I haven’t mentioned above?
This week I will collate all of the feedback I get and use it to prepare a funding proposal, work out the cash flow, budget for setup costs and as usual tell you all about it. To wrap up, I’m just really looking for help here it was tough alone and now even with all the awesome stuff Andy has been doing and Darryl’s advice it’s actually getting harder. So please, step up, we can do this but only by co-working towards a common goal (I’ll leave you with that awful pun).