NEW STRUCTURES:
This has turned into a never ending learning experience. What we discuss here may not apply 100% to your neighborhood.
We can build a full size field 200 by 85 in a building 210 by 110. That’s 23,100 square feet. You still have room for player boxes, three rows of seating and adequate office space, bathroom, pro shop, and snack bar. Not much else however. I’m into simple.
The first building we constructed was 34,000 square feet. I said I’m into simple and I didn’t build simple. I had an inhouse tenant who wanted to lease. So I built extra room for him. He was already in a couple of our other buildings. However what he learned, that we had previously learned, when it comes to your first expansion in another city, imagine everything that can go wrong, times that by four and you’ll be real close to what's going to happen to you. We eventually found another tenant. We use about 20,000 square feet of the facility at that first location and have leased out the rest. Our costs were $130,000 for land, right around two acres, which is roughly 90,000 square feet. Then the 34,000 square foot building came in at about $17.37 a foot. If you have to sprinkler the building you can add about $1.25 to $1.50 a foot. Yes it does include heat and air conditioning, office space, finishing out the bathrooms, and snack bar and pro shop space. But that was 1995 and costs are always rising. UPDATE: December 2006 it's nuts in a lot of places. I got quotes of $65 a foot in Phoenix, $55 and $52 in Utah, $62 a foot in Austin. Houston just came in at $27 for a new facility going up. It's hard to explain.
It has been easier to find vacant land than a free span building. If you can find land zoned recreational it will save you time and money. Except in Vegas. Recreational zoned land in Vegas is apparently for Casino’s and butting uglies. Be aware that on a resell, should you not make it at your location and have to dispose of your property, recreationally zoned property narrows down your options as to who you can sell to. Recreational is the cheapest property, after agricultural. Industrial or “light manufacturing” depending on the city is next. Commercial is the most expensive. Unless it’s recreational zoning, you’ll have to get a variance. Some industrial areas don’t allow metal buildings. They want you to spruce up the front of the buildings to either make them brick or look like brick. I tried to buy some land by the Denver Broncos training center and the seller told me that the Broncos lobbied him not to allow a metal building so close to their headquarters. I went and looked at their facility and they had a nice stone building of some sort, and an air bubble. Somebody’s full of it.
General rules for vacant land, in no particular order except as I think of them. You must have some green area. Many times you can use flood plain for your green area. By green area I mean you'll have to plant some grass or shrubs or something to make the city happy. Your building can only take up so much space on the lot. I’ve seen 30%, 40% and even one 50%. The number of parking spaces they require depends on how they classify you. If you have a single field facility you can probably survive on 50 to 60 parking spaces, but it’s tight. Other cities have demanded 90.
Most cities have some sort of regulation, based on either square footage or seating whether you need fire sprinklers. If you put your bathrooms and snack bar in the part of the building closest to the street you’ll save some sewer and water costs. When you’re trying to decide how much lighting you need, keep in mind the reflection off the white dasher boards will help as will white insulation, but I promise you that the turf will eat up the light. There's a theory light bulbs don’t really create light, they suck up dark. That’s why the bulb turns black when it quits working, it’s full of dark. Turf absorbs light, lots of it.
If you put in air conditioning, put your ducts where you can protect them. Net your field all the way around and above. Leave an exit for emergency stretchers. I’d put a buffer between the parking lot and the building, at least a sidewalk. Three of our buildings have been hit by players pulling into our parking lot. If you’re in a cold weather town be kind of careful about running the length of your building from west to east. When the snow melts it falls off the roof on the north side of the building, and never melts. These type of buildings are so tall the sun never gets to the north side of your building. Eventually the snow builds up and pushes in the side of your building, unless you work diligently to remove it. If you angle your roofs correctly, you'll be ok. Unfortunately sometimes these things are dictated to you. Paint your parking lot lines yellow, you can’t see the white ones when it snows.
When you design the pro shop you need wall space. You need more depth than width. Snack bar is better if people walk by it all the time. Railings on your bleachers. It looks better if you paint the floor into your entryway. Design a place for standings to be posted. Drinking fountains. Crash bars on your exit doors. Emergency exit signs. Traffic patterns so people don’t bump into each other. Sign up area. Leave as little room as possible for kicking the ball. Nothing good happens when they kick the ball in your building.
Many cities require one hour firewalls on your buildings, if you put your player boxes on the far side of the building away from the bleachers you will have to add a couple of more exit doors and certainly have to sprinkler the building. Some cities (Wichita) require a fire hydrant, some (Salt Lake) required everything hanging have metal straps attached in case of earthquake (but not San Diego). Some industrial parks require brick facade or concrete on either the whole building or in most cases the side facing the street, (Phoenix, Northglenn (Denver), Shreveport), in some instances you can get away with just four feet high and in others just brick the columns.
Boise has massive hook up fees, it was around $30,000 something. In Denver you have to remove the prarie dogs (wildlife) humanely from the property (they take them out to Rocky Mountain Arsenal where the eagles eat them). In Ogden we had the plumbing at the far side of the building from the street. In most cities sewer lines are around six to eight feet underground. You know what rolls down hill. On this particular street in Ogden they were 2.5 feet below ground. Had to redo the plans to move the bathrooms to the other end of the building. If you are the first project in an industrial park you're screwed. The park owner has thousands of permits to get before you can do anything and you get to be the test case where he experiments (Provo, Austin, Arapahoe (Denver). If you're the last project in an industrial park the city gets even with you and the developer for all of the injustices that happened prior to you getting involved (North Tucson).
If somebody finds bones while they are digging you're screwed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, Geneological Society, and several more organizations you've never heard of will show up and halt your construction/financing/purchase (Tucson three times). If you're backed up to an Air Force base don't plan on being able to use their water/sewer/gas/electric connections. You will have to bore under the freeway to get access (San Antonio). If somebody was once going to build a huge sports arena on your site for a pro team and the city voted that sports arenas require a minimum of ten acres you will inherit that requirement because you are a sports arena and have to buy all ten acres (New York). Know for sure where you're utility hook ups are before you pave your parking lot (Colorado Springs). You get an assessment for weird animals that are in short supply (Boise desert hare?). Some cities want fire ratings on your net, your turf (carpet) (Salt Lake, Boise). Some want metal bleachers, some wood with sprinklers under them, some none at all, some don't care. Some want asphalt parking based on seating inside your building, others base it on square footage of your building, others just want a certain amount.
Water run off is a nightmare. Not that you'll have a problem with it but most cities want retention ponds on your property or in the industrial park. Arapahoe County in Denver wants a traffic study and is concerned that bus and van loads of kids will collide with heavy trucks. Encinitas California told me they don't want indoor soccer in their city because they saw all those riots in Europe and they don't want that happening in their city. A few years later Encinitas gave the YMCA permission to build an indoor soccer facility which they did. Usually there is a ten foot easement to build within a property line and you can extend it to 20 feet for streets. If you paint your ceiling white after the sprinkler heads have been installed the fire marshall will show up and make you replace all the heads that have sprinkles of paint on them (about $15,000, Edmond Oklahoma).
