Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: [C-L]_Re:common house as public building

[Berrins (Berrins]

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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