reducing sound transmission through existing windows

[Professor]

OK, fine, bands never make money at gigs. But you could still set the place up as a venue, you could advertise the band is coming in for a session and that the crowd may be part of the live sound for a few tracks, and you can charge $5 at the door. If 20 people show, then the band has paid $100 of their fee for the week, and if 50 people show, then they've paid for $250. If they sell a few t-shirts or old CDs, they make a little extra, if you sell hotdogs and soda to the crowd, you make a little extra.
Maybe it will only defray 10% of the band's actual cost, but I'd bet they would still be interested.
If it's able to be a venue, then it could also have the potential to be rented by local ensembles like the community choir or school groups which gives anther source of potential revenue.
There are all sorts of ways to expand your business plan with a space like that to help ensure the success of the business you want to do.

-Jeremy

[I'm Painting Again]

Jer..those are great ideas..

how expensive is a space that large to heat?

anyone have any clue?

[cwileyriser]

I didn't think having bands play shows was a bad idea - just being realistic about the money possibilities for the bands, but I guess any band thinking about it would know about how much they could or couldn't make. I've played a few shows that were done in recording studios or other big art spaces like that, and they were fun, because the spaces were cool. Just be sure you know whatever rules the city or county lays down for that stuff.

As for heating, the cost of heating a space like that probably would be a substantial budget factor. My space is a 1300-ish square foot loft space, with 12-foot ceilings, wood floors, plaster over brick walls, with ten very big, very old, drafty single-pane windows. I've done what I can to plug up the gaps with weatherstripping until I can do something more permanent.

I'm in Georgia, so it doesn't get too cold in the winter - 30's mostly, sometimes in the 20's. But I ended up turning off the heat (natural gas), because it was costing a fortune to run it and it wasn't doing much - maybe keeping it around 65 if I was lucky. Without the heat running, it's around 60 or so - I'm on the third floor of the building, so I get whatever heat rises from below, and the windows let sunlight and heat in. When I was running the heat, it was costing me around $300 a month. That sucked. Cooling in the summer was a bitch too. I ran the A/C for a while last summer (again at about $300 a month, with the A/C straining to keep it down to 80 degrees), but tried to get away with fans as much as possible and eventually pretty much just stopped using the A/C too.

I'm hoping that fixing the window situation will do a lot to help the heating and cooling problems.

If there has been anyone in the space lately, you should be able to contact the utility companies to find out what the utility bills have been like for them.