Issue: Vertical accessibility to the basement and second floor of a sorority house.
Analysis: The applicant is requesting a waiver from providing vertical accessibility to the basement and second floor levels of a three story sorority house undergoing a $300,000 alteration. The scope of the work includes a kitchen expansion, house director addition, interior reconfigurations and front façade improvements. The expansion of the kitchen and director’s suite will increase th4e size of the firs floor 1,122 square feet. No work will be done to the basement or second floors. Estimates of $52,000 and $60,000 for elevator equipment only were submitted; and an addition estimate indicates it would cost an additional $47,000 for construction of the shaft, pit, machine room and fire suppression equipment.
Project Progress:
The project is under design.
Items to be Waived:
Vertical accessibility to the basement and second floor, as required by Section 553.509, Florida Statutes.
553.509: Vertical accessibility - Nothing in sections 553.501-553.513 or the guidelines shall be construed to relieve the owner of any building, structure or facility governed by those sections from the duty to provide vertical accessibility to all levels above and below the occupiable grade level, regardless of whether the guidelines require an elevator to be installed in such building, structure or facility, except for:
(1) Elevator pits, elevator penthouses, mechanical rooms, piping or equipment catwalks and automobile lubrication and maintenance pits and platforms;
(2) Unoccupiable spaces, such as rooms, enclosed spaces and storage spaces that are not designed for human occupancy, for public accommodations or for work areas; and
(3) Occupiable spaces and rooms that are not open to the public and that house no more than five persons, including, but not limited to equipment control rooms and projection booths.
Waiver Criteria: There is no specific guidance for a waiver of this requirement in the code. The Commission’s current rule, authorized in Section 553.512, Florida Statutes, provides criteria for granting waivers and allows consideration of unnecessary or extreme hardship to the applicant if the specific requirements were imposed.