Hey Jeff,
Sopo bikes moved to a new space back in the Spring and attached is a layout one of our volunteers designed as a plan for our shop, each grid square is 1'x1'. Our old shop was 300-400sq ft internal with most repairs happening outside in a parking lot with bikes hanging from Park Tool mobile stands. The new location is ~1100sq ft just for us with a 300sq ft bike shop/boutique attached to the front.
We share our location with a local boutique bike shop, Woodward Cyclery so the red space on the attached layout is where their display room is and our shop is set up around the back 3/4 of the space. For your purposes, you could consider their location to be about the size of a suitable lounge with office space.
We are lacking a little in storage but have put programs in place to keep donation bikes moving in and out of our shop rather than stockpile and gather dust. 15-20 bikes is about the max that we can store without getting cramped.
The new shop has 4 repair booths with 8 repair stands; each booth shares a set of common bike tools. We have a tube patching station so that those repairs will not take up an entire stand as well as a wall for hub maintenance with cone wrenches, freewheel tools, chain whips, axle vice, bench vice, etc. Having moved from a shop with a shared wall of tools and several repair stands farther away, the repair times are much quicker and easier with the new approach of having several shared walls of tools. You have the tools for 90% of repair jobs within 4-5ft of your bike so our volunteers and patrons are able to focus their time on fixing their bike rather than searching for tools. The truing stands are also on top of storage cabinets where we keep assorted construction materials, tools, event supplies, etc.
Shortly after building out the new space we had a Google Tour created so you can click through the link below for a virtual tour of our new space. We were really lucky to have a couple local photographers come out and do this pro bono. http://bit.ly/SopoGoogleTour
Hope this helps! Bobby
On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Jeff Neven j_neven@hotmail.com wrote:
Hi bike collectives,
We are moving again into a larger and more unique space and we are trying to figure out layout.
I am curious if others have floor plans or shop layout drawings. We are trying to figure out how to include display space, repair space (6 - 8 stands), lounge/hang-out space for building community, office, and the usual crazy amount of storage needed for donated bikes and new & used parts. I am really interested in ratios of how much space you allocate for each of these activities.
If you have drawings, I would love to see them to get us dreaming.
Anybody included a coffee shop, book store or other third space? If so, how is that working with a bike collective?
Jeff Neven New Hope Community Bikes Hamilton, Ontario
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