In his latest YouTube video for PROPERTY FORUM TV, “Where Do We Put the BIKES & BINS? | Considerations For Your Property,” Nicholas Wallwork, CEO of propertyforum.com and Redbrick, explores a variety of finishing touches you can make in your property development, particularly bicycle sheds, bin stores and smoking areas. Omit these areas, he cautions, and you could quickly face the end-user consequence. In this video, he walks viewers through a mentee client’s site — a residential-to-office conversion — and highlights the practicalities of clever placement of these areas.
Your planning application could be affected
“Don’t forget about your bike and bin storage — you need a place for it. If you are going for a full planning app, you’ll get absolutely refused if you don’t have adequate bike and bin storage,” Nicholas cautions. “Tap into your architects and planning consultants to help you navigate what you’ll need.” For big builds especially, adequate bike and bin storage are prerequisites for planning control.
Bikes and bin storage need to be centrally located near the entrances and exits to the building. These elements should also tie into the landscaping plan and material palette to look carefully thought out, and not as an eyesore. In Nicholas’s mentee site, they are using wood cladding for them. Planning should begin early in the process: Depending on the scale of your build, you could easily spend £20k on bikes and bin sites alone.
“Smoking areas are nice to have, and they really need to be sited away from the building in some way that’s a bit more subtle,” Nicholas points out. Providing some type of shelter from the elements or a nice garden is ideal.
Lean on the experts
These three elements are essential for both residential and commercial builds. Nicholas suggested that developers and investors work with their architect, arboriculturist and landscape designer because it’s likely that the location of the three aforementioned zones will depend largely on outdoor garden areas. Calculations will need to be made on the area required for the number of occupants that are being accommodated. Tapping into the expertise of these specialists will help with navigating potential requirements.
Consider the end tenant at all times
While these may seem like trivial considerations when you’re knee-deep in a challenging build, as Nicholas points out, these so-called ‘finishing touches’ are much more than just that: They’re the facilities that make all the difference to the functionality of your new development. If they are missing or overlooked, they will be quickly noticed by the end-buyer and the people who’ll be utilising the space every day. No one wants their inbox to fill up with those types of complaints!
For strategic help with the layout of your next property development, book a discounted £49.99 mentorship call with Nicholas now.
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