RE: RE: [C-L]_Re:common house as public building
From: Lashbrook, Stephan (lashbrookci.wilsonville.or.us)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 17:40:01 -0600 (MDT)
Most communities have an Appeals Board of some sort or other that is
empowered to overrule decisions of the building official.

There can be some tricky politics if you are worried about your future
relationship with the building official, but these things usually work out
OK.  At least, that has been my experience from many years of working with
inspectors.

Stephan



-----Original Message-----
From: Berrins [at] aol.com [mailto:Berrins [at] aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 11:17 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: RE: [C-L]_Re:common house as public building



In a message dated 4/17/01 10:18:43 AM, floriferous [at] msn.com writes:

<< Every use that Lynn listed you can do in a condo multipurpose room, and
you

probably won't have to:


Put in an elevator

Buy an expensive grease trap

Buy an expensive stove hood

Have expensive  panic hardware on the doors

Have an expensive roof drain system installed

Have special glass on any doors


Being a public building often adds  a great deal of unnessarily permit

overhead and expense that you can avoid by just calling the building a condo

multipurpose building. Most condos have such things and the banks and such

are totally hip to them. The requirements for public buildings can add as

much as 15% to your cost.


Rob Sandelin >>

All this is great, but we didn't have a choice.  The city building inspector

made the decision to classify us as a public building.  Our architect did
her 
best to convince him otherwise, but it didn't matter what we called it or 
what other towns had done; he was unmoved.  If you have any strategies for 
upcoming groups on ways to approach building inspectors, that would be
great. 
 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, being forced to build to public building 
standards cost us a lot more than we originally budgeted for.  The lesson in

our tale is to be sure you know how you will be classified before you set
the 
budget for your Common House.

    Roger Berman
    Pathways Cohousing
    Northampton, MA

Where the grass is up and the daffodils are in full bloom- finally!  And we 
love our Common House.  Really!
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