Anyone heard of this?
VAScotty,
Yes. I live in Southwest Florida, and when I moved into my building I thought the bathroom would be no problem, but I was wrong. I was told it had to be handicap accessible and available for use to all public, even though I had no seating. I had to spend over $10,000 on the remodel just to move the bathroom to the front of the store (as it was in the back). Maybe once a week does a customer use it, it’s ridiculous.
One of the links that popped up was from Florida. Seems cut and dry there, seems like it varies by locality elsewhere. So dumb.
Not here. With no seating, no bathroom is required. The bathroom for employees DOES have to meet ADA standards though.
Yes, I too ran into this exact same situation, building out a delco. We had an existing restroom in the back of the store when I leased my space. I planned to blow out the walls and make it ADA compliant, but when I went to review the plans with the city I was told I had to have a ADA compliant, publicly accessible restroom. The inspector actually wadded the plans up and threw them at me, but that is a different story for a different day…
I had to dig up a brand new ceramic tile (the landlord had it there) job run sewer underground an extra 30-40 feet and of course fill it back in and re-tile. On the tile I never expected to match pattern exactly but figured I could come close and just re-tile the portion we dug up. Come to find out I could not even match the size of the 16 inch tile, they seem to have fallen out of vogue and are rarely made these days. Then I tried to match on a multiples of 16 such as three rows of 16 inch so 48" and replace with 4 rows of 12" or 2 24" or something like that and I am now up to 3-400 square feet of tile to replace and it still doesn’t match the original. One of the tile places came up with a really attractive tile for about $1 per sq foot so we just re-tiled the whole store (1000 square feet). Total additional cost is probably in same ballpark of 10,000 for adding this public restroom.
For the final kick in the pants, I am thinking hey as long as I have a public restroom I can add a few tables so ok, I will play along because I like that option. When we went through the inspection process, the city tells me that if I add a single table to my lobby (which probably has room for two or three, four person booths) I need to have separate mens and womens restrooms! I am not open yet, but once everything is finalized and some of the grand opening attention is away from us, we may test this rule or god forbid go through a variance process because I think this is a little over the top.
Historically speaking though I have been around delco’s for twenty years and only very recently do I see this being enforced.
I am in Metro Detroit for reference. Sorry you are facing this additional expense!
I spent all day in the damn codes yesterday looking for a loophole… As far as the unisex bathroom not being sufficient, I would have him show you the code… I know there is a big chart in the International Plumbing Code, chapter 4, that shows what is required depending on type of business and occupancy capacity.
We were all ready to sign the lease and had negotiated a great deal, and now that could be all thrown into the trash.
Hi Vascotty;
Your situation is becoming more common throughout the nation.
We are also running to jurisdictions requiring drinking fountains in the lobbies of pizza shops.
George Mills
Government bureaucrats gone wild creating laws…only the legislative branch should be able to. One of biggest problems with our country right now.
At least in our area, NE Washington State, we wouldn’t need a bathroom for a DELCO only place. Since we have a dining room, we do need a bathroom, but our single, unisex one is sufficient. Counting myself lucky…for now.