Thomas,
I find your question very interesting.  I am a graduate student return to
the museum field after a decade in retail and real estate management.  The
concepts you speak of are not only common, but required in those fields.
For example, when building a retail store, a company would determine how
many sales dollars per square foot it can expect to generate based on
company history, market data, etc.  If it expects to generate $100/per
square foot in sales, and its average store is 10,000 sq ft, then it would
expect to generate $1Million in gross sales.  Logically, one would assume
that if one just increases the store size, the profit margin would increase
accordingly.  However, when retail stores reach a certain size (critical
size), the effect is the reverse.  The entire average per sq ft is
decreased over the area of the store.  In other words, if they exceed
critical size, sales will not be enough to maintain a profitable store.  I
have seen this happen quite a bit in the early 90's as several retailers
tried to out-do each other with "superstores".  The bigger the store, the
higher the sales per sq ft has to average.  This is VERY difficult to
maintain.  Obviously many factors determine critical size for each unique
location, but each retailer generally has a formula.
Secondly, one of the five laws of appraisal is that same-use lands achieve
highest value.  Mixed use lands are devalued based on usage.  In other
words, if your house is in a neighborhood with 150 other houses, the land,
and structures on them, achieve their maximum value.  Conversely, if you
house sits on a street with only two other houses and mostly businesses,
both your house and the businesses will not achieve maximum value.  An
example of this is the large tracts of suburban houses or a shopping center
that features both Wal-Mart and Target or Home Depot and Lowe's.
I understand these concepts and have seen them applied repeatedly in the
for-profit world.  In the case of the second principle of appraisal, its
transference to the non-profit sector would be seamless.  No doubt all
could benefit from being in the same area.  In fact, this has been done for
years.  However, I don't know how you would extrapolate the first formula
to non-profits.  It obviously applies in that the same reasons stores loss
sales if they get too big (or too small), museums would lose patrons.  But
since the formula I have seen relies on sales data and projections, I don't
know how to figure formula when most of the square footage is a non-selling
area.  I would be EXTREMELY interested if someone could.
Lori Allen,
Graduate Student, UMSL

"Well behaved women rarely make history."
                                  - Anonymous

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Thomas D. Meier
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 9:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Size vs. Content


Dear listmembers

Thank you for the responses to my question about the "ciritcal size" of
museums. Maybe I'll have to go a bit further into detail. I of course
totally agree with the view that most of you expressed, that it is first
content and the creation of interest that counts, especially in the
planning of a new museum. Size comes afterwards.

But I would still defend the idea that size matters to a certain extent.
The problem we are dealing with here is that in a quite restricted area
there are situated a number of mid-size museums: a history museum, a
natural history museum, the Swiss Museum of Communication, the Swiss Alpine
Museum and a contemporary art gallery. These museums are reasonably
staffed, their budgets are ok (that still means to low of course), their
collections are big enough to create interest on a large scale. None of
this fairly successful museums however can on its own offer visitors an
experience that would make a longer trip for a day-out worthwhile. And that
has to do with size, facilities and a variety of offers to visitors. My aim
would be to make my neighbouring museums understand that we have to work
together much more closely. Because then the "critical size" can more
easily be obtained. In order to give a bit of weight to what I am driving
at I wanted to know if anyone had any idea about what "critical size" in a
museum context could mean. I know that things like that are being
discussed, I simply don't know precisely who is actually discussing it and
what the results of this discussions might be.  And to be clear once again:
I am actually talking about square feet or square meters even though I know
that this is a somewhat reductive and rather basic approach.

Thanks again

Thomas

------------------------------------
Dr. Thomas Dominik Meier
Director
Museum of Communication
Helvetiastrasse 16
3000 Bern 6
Switzerland
T: +41 31 357 55 10
F: +41 31 357 55 99
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