The phrase "a floor area" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to the measurement of a space or the surface area of a floor in a building or room.
Example: "The apartment has a total floor area of 1,200 square feet."
Alternatives: "a surface area" or "a space measurement".
The store opened in 1909 with a floor area of 42,000 square feet, which later was doubled.
Density rules for the block call for a building with a floor area five times greater than the lot area.
Zoning generally uses a floor area ratio, or FAR, to designate the maximum size of a building.
A sample rule: "No dwelling shall be constructed or maintained on any residential lot which has a floor area less than 5,000 square feet".
In the R7-2 zone, a medium-density apartment house district, dwellings may have a floor area 3.44 times greater than the lot area (or 81,029 square feet in the case of this 23,555-square-foot parcel), while community facilities may have a floor area 6.5 times greater (or 153,107 square feet, just slightly more than the center will have).
One of the key questions before the appeals board was the size of the Scholastic Building, almost twice as large as zoning would permit on the site, where a new building would ordinarily be limited to a floor area no more than five times the lot size (that is, a floor-area ratio of 5 to 1).
The first proposal had a floor-area ratio of 11, measured over the combined lots.
The developer never received a floor-area bonus for the 26,000-square-foot park, although it did receive other valuable zoning concessions.
The plaza yielded a floor-area bonus of 410,000 square feet, based on a ratio of 10 square feet of office space for every square foot of open space.
(For example, a floor-area ratio of five would allow a lot with an area of 2,000 square feet to have a 10,000-square-foot building constructed on it).
Scholastic ended up with 87,880 square feet of space on its 10,000-square-foot lot, a floor-area ratio approaching 9 to 1. (It also has 20,000 feet below ground that does not count in zoning calculations).
