Condo Common Room Creation/Use - Ideas

[Neil4Speed]

I was wondering if people might be able to give me some feedback on this. My 100 unit condo has a common room (about 700sq ft in size), which is unused. The condo board was allocated about 15,000 to spend on improving the common room for something that would be used by the residents of the building.

There have been a few ideas thrown around:

- Guest Suite (economics probably don't work with such a small number of units in the building, managing it would be difficult)

- Simple Gym (Some Treadmills put down)

- Movie Theater room (Projector, a sectional couch)

- Workshop (for people to work on their bikes, art projects etc)

Just wondering if anyone else might have some thoughts on what has worked successfully in their buildings or any thoughts of the ideas that I listed above.

Thanks in advance.

[D'z Nutz]

My condo has a common room, guest suites, theatre room, and gym.

Without a doubt, the gym is used the most frequently by far. There's almost always someone in there. Throw in an elliptical, treadmill, some free weights/dumbells and benches, and some yoga mats, it'll be used.

[leftwing]

In my building (500 Units) we have two guest suites. They cost $40/night to rent out, and they always seem to be rented (they book about 2-3 weeks in advance). It is a source of revenue I guess and thats about it. I have never used one, but I guess it would be handy if you had family from out of town or something. Pretty easy to manage; Damage deposit required - returned upon satisfactory 'check out'.


We also have 2 common rooms, both available at no cost, but must reserve ahead of time (DD required again). One common room has a big TV, 2 couches and a pub style type table with bar chairs. It also has a formal type meeting room, but I think that is more for when the board has meetings. This room doesn't seem to be used that often, except I notice that sometimes there is a group of young guys that set up a few TV's and xbox's and game out all night.

The other common room has a TV, few couches, table, but also has a wet bar with mini kitchen. This seems to be used more often for children's bday parties, bridal/baby showers and those kind of things it seems.

Our gym is the most often used out of all our amenities. And out of all the sections of our gym treadmills are the most used as well. Will having to maintain a gym and its machines, as well as increased insurance be a big cost? I am not sure. Not sure how much equipment you could fit comfortably with 700sqft.

Question for people with a theatre room: How does it work? Do you reserve it, or is it kind of open for drop in and bring your own movie? Or do they have a schedule where they advertise what movie will be playing at what time and you can come watch if you wanted?



Does your building have a place to store bicycles? You could make your open space big bike rack....

[Cos]

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[Neil4Speed]

Thanks for the comments everyone


Originally posted by leftwing
In my building (500 Units) we have two guest suites. They cost $40/night to rent out, and they always seem to be rented (they book about 2-3 weeks in advance). It is a source of revenue I guess and thats about it. I have never used one, but I guess it would be handy if you had family from out of town or something. Pretty easy to manage; Damage deposit required - returned upon satisfactory 'check out'.

We also have 2 common rooms, both available at no cost, but must reserve ahead of time (DD required again). One common room has a big TV, 2 couches and a pub style type table with bar chairs. It also has a formal type meeting room, but I think that is more for when the board has meetings. This room doesn't seem to be used that often, except I notice that sometimes there is a group of young guys that set up a few TV's and xbox's and game out all night.

The other common room has a TV, few couches, table, but also has a wet bar with mini kitchen. This seems to be used more often for children's bday parties, bridal/baby showers and those kind of things it seems.

Our gym is the most often used out of all our amenities. And out of all the sections of our gym treadmills are the most used as well. Will having to maintain a gym and its machines, as well as increased insurance be a big cost? I am not sure. Not sure how much equipment you could fit comfortably with 700sqft.

Question for people with a theatre room: How does it work? Do you reserve it, or is it kind of open for drop in and bring your own movie? Or do they have a schedule where they advertise what movie will be playing at what time and you can come watch if you wanted?

Does your building have a place to store bicycles? You could make your open space big bike rack....


It seems like your guest suites have worked well for your building. It seems like your experience of common rooms with TV's etc, being underutilized is about the same as with other condos

I think the best way to go for actual use and something to boost the value of the building would be a simple gym facility, ie. treadmills.

The Theatre room idea is not very developed. The vision was to have a projector and some sectionals. Either the option to plug in using an HDMI or schedule a movie and you could come around. I don't think it would be used at all.


We do have a bike storage area in the building otherwise that would have been a good idea.

[gwill]

Just something to think about is security. In one of my properties with 140 units in it we had some sketchy things happening in our one common room even though it is rarely used. It's setup as a board room with a good size kitchen if you want to entertain. Poker night, meeting room, or party room if you want to do it that way. Simple deposit and we dont charge to let people use it.

Unfortunately we had a random user of the room copy the key and had been using the room for extra curricular activities with random people they met on online dating sites. Use your imagination with that one.. they got caught in the act. hahaha.

I should add our gym is fob activated but this common room was just a regular key. Because usage of the room was so low to begin with we didn't upgrade the access to this room. In the end a simple key that can not be copied would have avoided this. Or we could have added a camera to this room like the rest of our building but the cost would have been counter productive. Things to consider though when your putting lots of expensive things into the room.