I was recently discussing construction costs with an Executive Director for an Arts and Crafts Education Center in Palm Springs. Below is the result of that conversation:
After reading your wonderful guidance (https://evstudio.com/cost-per-square-foot-of-commercial-construction-by-region/) to many others over the last year, I thought I’d take a chance and ask for your input on where I might search to get a very rough (preliminary) idea of construction costs for a 10,000 SF arts and crafts education center along with 3 detached studio buildings (ranging from 960 sf to 2,700 sf in size) to be built in the Palm Springs area.
Thanks for your inquiry – I’m happy to help if I can! We have participated in a number of community oriented buildings across the country over the years, not dissimilar from the kind of use you are describing. Currently, we are working on a senior care project just north of Palm Springs that also has a fairly significant community building/space program associated with it and I have some reasonably current data that could at least inform a preliminary budget. Like all projects, yours will be specific to your objectives in terms of detail, level of finish, etc.. But in general, I think you could use a starting range of $150-$175 per square foot for your project in that location. That number would include the construction cost of the finished building(s), but would not include land costs, site entitlement and development costs, soft and financing costs, or furnishings or special equipment for the building (like kilns for example).
So, for the program you described, I come up with approximately 15,500 total square feet across a main building and three other detached cottages on the campus. So you would be looking to budget, for the building construction costs, between $2.3M and $2.7M with the median falling right around $2.5M.
I hope this helps in your research, and once you and your board decide to move forward with the project, we would love to discuss working with you on the architecture and engineering design. We provide design work across the country and have a team of experts in this product type that can bring you effective cost cutting strategies that give you and your board the most for the investment they are making in this great project.
The images shown in this post are of another project that we’ve done that combines program elements of Arts and Crafts Education with classroom space for a childhood arts program. These types of projects certainly come in all shapes and sizes, and we’d love to learn more about your specific campus and how we can design something that fits your needs perfectly (and under budget!). Thanks, and best of luck with your project!
