Deferring the Elevator in a Historic Adaptive Reuse
A 1924 two-story unreinforced-masonry warehouse in a locally designated historic district is being converted to ground-floor retail with eight residential units above. The shell gets new seismic bracing, a new storefront and entry, and the upper floor is rebuilt with new partitions, plumbing, and HVAC. Construction cost for the alteration is $2.4 million. A new traction elevator and shaft is priced at $480,000; reworking the interior stair as part of the accessible route is $60,000. The owner wants to defer the elevator under the 20 percent path-of-travel cap. Floor-to-floor is 13 feet and no shaft exists. The ground floor sits 30 inches above the sidewalk, and the city will not approve a ramp in the public right-of-way.
1. The owner asks whether the elevator can be deferred. Work through the path-of-travel analysis (CBC 11B-202.4 and 11B-202.5) and state what must be produced and recorded before the permit set is complete.
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- Start with the trigger, not the percentage. Under 11B-202.4 an alteration must provide an accessible route to the altered area and to the restrooms, telephones, and drinking fountains serving it, but only up to a cost that does not exceed 20 percent of the cost of the alteration. The cap is a ceiling on obligation, not a discount on required elements.
- Run the arithmetic on the alteration cost, not the project: 20% of $2.4M = $480,000. The elevator alone is at that ceiling; elevator plus stair work is ~$540,000, i.e., over it. So the elevator may be deferred only if the stair and entry work is actually built, because path-of-travel spending is allocated in priority order (accessible entrance, then route to the altered area, then serving facilities) until the cap is consumed.
- The 30-inch entry cannot be deferred. If the right-of-way ramp is refused, examine regrading inside the line, a relocated entrance, or a platform lift at the ground-floor entry - not an exception.
- Historic status is a separate, narrower route: 11B-202.5 applies only to a qualified historic building and only after the building official, in consultation with the State Historic Preservation Officer, determines that compliance would threaten or destroy the historic significance. A local district designation alone does not qualify.
- Deliverable: a written cost breakdown by a qualified cost estimator, a code analysis identifying each prioritized element and its cost, the building official's written determination, and a note on the plans that the deferred obligation revives on the next alteration.
2. Two years later a resident of unit 6, who uses a wheelchair, asks the owner to approve and help pay for an interior platform lift to reach her unit and to permit a ramp at the common entrance. The owner refuses, citing the historic district. How should this be evaluated?
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- This is a fair housing question, not a building-code question. Under 42 U.S.C. 3604(f)(3)(B) and California Government Code 12955, a person with a disability may make reasonable modifications to a dwelling unit at her own expense, and the provider must permit it; modifications to common areas and common-use elements are the provider's obligation and its cost.
- The small-building exemption in the FHA does not help: it is limited to owner-occupied buildings of four units or fewer, and this building has eight units.
- Historic designation is not a defense. The provider may, where reasonable, condition an interior modification on restoration at lease termination, but cannot condition it on extra rent, an increased deposit, or a waiver of rights.
- The refusal itself is a separate violation independent of the lift. The architect's role is technical: identify whether a lift can be installed without structural compromise, whether the seismic bracing interferes with the shaft, and produce an option that satisfies both the accessibility obligation and the historic review, so the owner has a lawful path rather than only a refusal.
3. A retail tenant remodels only its restroom at a cost of $85,000. The tenant's contractor claims no path-of-travel work is due because the project is small. Is that right?
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- No. The 20 percent cap resets with each alteration. Twenty percent of $85,000 is $17,000 available for path-of-travel elements serving the altered restroom.
- Do not confuse the cap with the base obligation: the altered element itself - the restroom - must be brought into compliance as an element altered, including clear floor space, fixture clearances, and usable controls and hardware, with no cap.
- The cap governs only the route and the other serving elements (entrance, corridor, drinking fountain, if any) leading to it. On a historic shell where the route is already compliant from the earlier work, the $17,000 may be a small obligation - but it must be analyzed and documented, not assumed away as zero.
- Practically, this is where projects go wrong: the tenant's designer never looks outside the demised premises. The architect of record for the base building should be notified so the base-building route is not inadvertently broken by the tenant's work.