Presentation of first sketch by the architects

[Sarah]

Hi all.
So I edited the list of questions

@els

The things that are not clear to me:

• how big can the cellar space go , it cannot grow unlimited (but maybe not a question for now as there is no need known and i have the impression this topic is not one important for the commune as long as we stick to the surface of the front building)
• they were talking about having no place yet for the ‘bins’ which they - my understanding- would have liked to foresee above ground for practical reasons but as the bikes are put in those ‘possible’ places, their idea is to put them on the -1 level. I don’t know if this will increase the m2 of common cellar place. Maybe, maybe not, but if needed, the increase of price will be very limited

Do you want some of this in the question list? If so, can you add it in the document, I’m not sure how to sum it up.

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I’m really unclear what our final take is on mini.

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@els

here is now a post ‘auvents vélos’ (my understanding is that for the bikes in the garden, please frenchspeakers correct me if you would interpret this differently) for a total budget of 30 000 euro => so i guess this will mean decent ‘roofs’ or bike sheds (so budget foreseen for that)

Auvent means just a cover on the top

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@els

there are 135m2 of terrasses. If i count i don’t come to 135 m2 of obligatory terrasses, so @sarah: could you add 2 questions to the list of question for architects:

• how do they come to 135 m2 of obligatory terrasses
• in the ‘cout’ section (where they calculate the total of all costs), they don’t seem to foresee the cost of the 135 m2 of obligatory terrasses , while in the ‘ventes options’ section they mention them as an income. It seems like an error which - in case it is - make the price/m2 rise

I added them as is, as I didn’t follow your reasoning. Please check and edit if needed.

[Lee]

@reef-building, would somebody be willing to offer a couple of bullet points on the key conclusions on the meeting with the architects? It could be just a couple of sentences, just to keep everybody informed about where we are with things. TIA!

[els]

a little correction of what i wrote before…

@els

there is an extra post for the coursives (which are not optional), which are at a cost of 950 euro/m2.

In the cost calculation of the maxi version these obligatory terrasses and coursives are calculated at a cost of 950 euro/m2 BUT for now the architects have foreseen to sell them at a price of 1500 euro/m2 (a price that is for us to set). Meaning the total cost I mentioned above should be adapted to the costs below (if we maintain the architects proposition)

• for 3 bedroom first floor and second floor in the front building O2 and O5: you have two obligatory terraces (that both can be converted to apartment space if wanted) of a total of 21 m2 => an extra 31500 on top of the price of the unit
• for the 2 bedroom first and second floor in the front building O4 and O7: you have an obligatory coursive of 9,5 m2 (that can be converted to apartment space if wanted)=> an extra 14,250 on top of the price of the unit
• for the 3 bedroom top floor back building: you have an obligatory terrace of 38 m2 => an extra 57.000 on top of the price of the unit
• for the 3 bedroom top floor front building O8: you have an obligatory coursive of 22 m2 (that cannot be converted into apartment space) => an extra 33,000 euro on top of the price of the unit
• for the 1 or 2 bedroom top floor front building O10, you have an obligatory coursive of 14 m2 (that cannot be converted into appartment space) => an extra 21,000 euro on top of the price of the unit.

At what price we want to sell them (building cost or more) is up to us to set, and setting this price will have an impact on the final price/m2. Setting the price of these obligatory terraces to 950 euro/m2 instead of 1500 euro/m2 leads to a difference of 74,250 euro, which is peanuts in comparaison to the total budget of 9,400,000 euro (and thus probably leading to a small raise of the price per m2), but again it’s a raise. => i’ve added this as well in the document of the unforseen expenses.

@Lee @reef-finance : My opinion: before people can commit on which appartment they chose, i think there needs to be clarity on the price for these extras:

• these obligatory terraces and coursives.

And next to that also on

• the ‘private garden spaces’ behind the back building (rate of the price of the land or not) and
• the parking spaces.
• private ‘caves’ (where the selling price is now set at more or less the construction cost, but maybe if we have a higher price for the obligatory terraces, maybe we should do the same for the private caves?)

So according to me also a task for team finance for the coming months?

[alberto]

I would propose to keep it simple. Sell private cellars and balconies at cost (why would we make a profit on them?); sell private coursives at a fixed fraction of the unit’s specific price per m2 (for example 30 or 35%). Obligatory balconies are, as I understand, still private.

The private gardens and parking spaces are a bit more complicated. Note, however, that the existence of private gardens means a (peanuts-level) overall price decrease for non-private garden units. This is because we need to price private gardens for reasons of equity, but we don’t actually pay for the garden. So that becomes a small extra that goes into the budget, yay!

But yes, we need a proposal on that.

[Lee]

@els

@Lee @reef-finance : My opinion: before people can commit on which appartment they chose, i think there needs to be clarity on the price for these extras:

I agree that this requires clarity. As a first step, would it be possible to update the price calculator with the prices the architects are proposing? We can take a group decision on this later on, when we have more information, but for now the architects’ indication looks like a solid place to start?

@Lee

would somebody be willing to offer a couple of bullet points on the key conclusions on the meeting with the architects?

My key take-away was that we are good to go to the commune, and that this does not necessarily require a dedicated consent process at this moment.

I’ll try to clarify that. So when they said “we need you to give the green light for the gabarits and what not”, in my understanding this was an excessively detailed question. Rather, what they need to know is "can we go to the commune to present a sketch with the following features:

1. Maxi

2. Number of units of every type: x, y and z?"

These two points come with the following understanding:

1. Even if eventually we wouldn’t go for Maxi, it makes sense to ask for Maxi and see which reaction we get. No need to overthink that now.

2. The number of units needs to be adjusted, because in a scenario with Oak Tree, we need 5 + 3 units, i.e. they need to fit in 2 extra studios in the sketch they will be presenting and they will take care of that in the next coming days. The division into units is of no relevance to the commune yet, so no need to overthink that.

That said, my second take-away was about the size of the units. We had a discussion about moving walls, and how to divide the buildings into units, and one of the conclusions was that the size of the units in Asterix / the middle building is too big. This too I understand they will be looking into, so I expect that we will be receiving a revised sketch in the course of next week?

Any additions and corrections to this summary are very welcome.

@sarah can you tell us in which folder we can find the meeting notes?

[Sarah]

@Lee

@reef-building, would somebody be willing to offer a couple of bullet points on the key conclusions on the meeting with the architects? It could be just a couple of sentences, just to keep everybody informed about where we are with things. TIA!

@reeflings The full minutes as well as the original answers from Serge can be found here: internal link

As for the bullet points, I guess the main takeaway is that the architects recommend going to the commune even if the details are not ironed out, to get a confirmation that maxi can work the way it is. It is a bit pointless to start drawing the apartments if the volumes are going to change.

And action points were:

• Oak tree to contact the architects about the size of the studio and compliance to the RRU
• Architects to :
  • make a simulation for a mini bis with only asterix bein smaller
  • try and see whether it would be possible to fit a 3 bedroom and a 2 bedrooms in Asterix
  • make sure we have 8 studios
  • give a clear overview on the number of units in each scenario
  • send sun simulation and garden size info

I’m sorry, I don"t think I took very good notes. Please everybody feel free to add to this post and/or to the document where you see extra info or corrections needed.

[manuelpueyo]

there was an issue with reception of emails between The Reef and the architects. serge (architect)_ tried to send a document with responses and this document was probably sent to an address that nobody from the team can check. contact@thereef.brussels

the architects also mentioned that we should pay attention to having all project discussions in the open web. they fear that some neighbourse may use this info to harm the project development

[els]

@Lee

I agree that this requires clarity. As a first step, would it be possible to update the price calculator with the prices the architects are proposing?

No update needed. All the terraces (and coursives) are set at the same price. The difference is in the cost, not the selling price.
fyi: I’ve been working on a new simulation file, where you choose a unit (instead of chosing m2) and the m2 and possible obligatory terraces/coursive are retrieved, you can also indicate the 2-4% markup. The goal is to also to take into account the weighing factor once we agreed upon that (and that’s why i haven’t published it yet). If you would allready find it useful, here it is
simulation file 2.ods (42.5 KB)

[els]

@reeflings
One of the things the architects promissed to do, following the meeting of the 21/10, was to simulate the impact on the price if we would go for a version in between the maxi and the mini version.
So in the mini version they reduced the size of the front building, the middle building and the back building.
In this new simulation, they kept the sizes of the front building and the back building as in the maxi version, but they only reduced the size of the middle building as in the mini version, which leads to 2 bedroom apartments that are more aligned with our programme and with studio’s that are smaller/more fitting the need of oaktree in the middle building.

so in this version, the price comes down to 4473 euro/m2, an extra 35 euro /m2 than the maxi version.
Fyi:the maxi version came down to 4438 euro/m2, the mini version came down to 4494 euro/m2