Cohousing-L Mailing List: Coho common houses built to public-building standards

[Bob Morrison (bomorris]

  I am a lurker on this list. I am very concerned about the following at
Pathways Cohousing in Northampton, MA:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:40:00 EST, Berrins [at] aol.com wrote:

 One example: the building inspector decided, well after the initial
construction budget was set, that we had to build the CH to commercial
building standards, adding several tens of thousands of dollars to the
cost of construction (and mostly not for accessibility issues).  This
was unforeseen by both the contractor and the project coordinator...
[end quote]

  My first question is, are "commercial building standards" the same as
"public building standards".

  And on Wed, 19 Dec 2001 16:59:57, "Laura Fitch, A.I.A."
<lfitch [at] krausfitch.com>
wrote:

> And a correction:  As far as I know EVERY Massachusetts cohousing
> community has a common house that is built to the public building
> standards.

  I would like to hear (via the list) from people from other coho
communities in MA about this. What additional things did you have to do
to the common house to meet "public building standards"? How much did
this add to the cost of the common house? Fire alarms and fire exit
signs don't seem like a huge expense to me, but sprinklers would be. Did
you have to put sprinklers in the common house?

And:

> As architect for Pathways, I want to clarify a few things.  When asked

> by me, the Massachusetts Access Board specifically interpretted their
> code as follows:  Pathways could have "inaccessible" basement laundry
as
> long as all your units were "for sale" NOT rental.

  Does this mean that if in the future a Pathways unit owner wants to
rent out all or part of his/her unit, the group must make the basement
handicapped-accessible even if the rental unit has its own
handicapped-accessible washer and dryer? If so, this rule seems very
strange to me.

Bob Morrison
Salem, NH

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