Parag,

I'll suggest the same to you that I did to the folks in Melbourne - take
care of the insulation, heating, and cooling before you begin to camp
out in the space, before you begin working on bikes and before you begin
storing things there. If you're already kind of in there, try not to
really settle down and set up until you get climate control installed.
The same applies to electric. All of these things are a huge pain in the
ass to install when the place is full of stuff and use is in full swing.

And yes, under the circumstances you described, I'd suggest some kind of
air conditioning. That could be a pair of huge fans at either end of the
space just as well as an AC unit. Or installing reflective film over the
windows for Summer and rolling it up in Winter - there are several
options and there may be a department at your university that would be
happy to consult as a volunteer effort.

One thing I hear a lot from people coming in from other college and
university community bike shops are stories that amount to the following
dynamic: the shop depends on student presence for staff, and students
come and go.

Subsequently, you should prepare your
administrative/collective/cooperative structure to survive the moment
when the three most committed and skilled students are gone, and all
that's left are newbie freshman wondering "why all these cool bikes are
in this room over here". I don't have a great answer for how to solve
this, other than paying a local to be a consistent backbone for the
shop. A common story from these individuals would be that they had this
cool "bike co-op" at their school but no one really knew what they were
doing and no one was ever there, in other words it's just a big room
with a bunch of random disordered tools and bike parts that sits empty
most of the time. But they heard it was really active at one time.

The interesting thing about those situations is that it becomes a lesson
in how a space by itself can function as the institutional memory of an
entity.

Cyclista Nicholas



On 2018-07-05 21:33, joshua mcdermott wrote:
> Hi:
>
> We started a very small bike co-op at the University of San Francisco
> about 2 years ago.
>
> 1. Sure, feel free to email me directly as well.  It has really just
> been a very small offshoot from a larger push to get students more
> engaged in direct hands on work/learning/engineering (and art).  but
> its been a great way to build bridges with many departments and
> groups- bringing together a diverse community from every
> discipline.    last semester we had a class from environmental studies
> do projects, and we also have the gardening class building mobile seed
> libraries etc, but also more engineering focused with workshops with
> bici-tec, that builds bike machines in Guatemala to do work like pump
> water, or power all sorts of agricultural and household machines.
>
> 2. nothing to help.  i would like to know myself.  we are pretty much
> doing this on a shoe string so only borrow or build.. rarely buy
> anything.
>
> 3, 4, &5. Our plan changes a lot as its a shared space with a
> woodshop, so things shift as needed.  if you have a dedicated space I
> am quite jealous!  I would like to know how you managed to get such an
> expansion into your own large space!
>
>
> On 7/5/18 1:40 PM, Parag Kapoor wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>>
>> We're close to launching a new bicycle co-operative at York
>> University, Toronto, ON, Canada!
>>
>> I had some requests to ask the community:
>>
>>  1. I would like to connect with the managers of other
>> University/college campus based bicycle co-ops to discuss practices
>> and business models, go over past decisions made to get to where they
>> are now.
>>
>> 2. Are there any tool bench designs that are favorites? I really like
>> the tool benches @ Charlie's in Toronto, but would like to see other
>> examples of well thought out tool benches.
>>
>> 3. Could we look at examples of shop layouts? Has any co-operative
>> made a floor-map with the furnishings placement on it? We have plans
>> as well to share!
>>
>> 3. Do creature comforts matter? I wanted to be double sure. Normally I
>> would not hesitate myself to say A/C is definitely not needed at
>> first, but for context we are moving from a hidden closet in terms of
>> operations into a 1500+ sq ft. new storefront.
>>
>> We have big glass windows that face east, which means that by 10 am
>> the place is a broiler. Installing an A/C system feels like the right
>> thing to do....
>>
>> As well I have a whole bunch of photos of our space and shop logo to
>> share to anyone interested!*
>> *
>> *
>> *
>> Best,
>>
>> Parag*
>> *
>>
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