Opening Scene:

Your awesome real estate broker has found the perfect building or suite for your company. So you go to lease or buy a building and it has a fantastic amount of office space.

Looks good to you, so no problem. Right?

Sign on the dotted line.

Boom.

So where’s the parade, band, and champagne?

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when people come to us later (if you didn’t get a survey before), that’s often our role. (We’re nice people, we promise.)

Here are some common issues:

1. You’re under-parked.
2. Your bathrooms are too small to meet ADA code and/or things don’t measure up.
3. Offices that seem fine were built without a permit and you’ve assumed liability.
4. Un-permitted construction could have improperly penetrated a rated fire wall.
5. Electrical Load. Do you have enough to grow or are you maxed out.
6. You gave an easement to a phone company for their cell tower and you lost parking.
7. The awesome storage mezzanine is perfect – but is not safe.

If any of the list above don’t ring a bell, ring ours. We’d love to chat. We don’t want to scare you but awareness is for your benefit.

Why does this matter?

Many cities have occupancy inspections before a city business license will be issued. Also, when you come to us to design-build your tenant improvements, you find out that there were offices built without a permit or your office space exceeds the amount of square footage according to the parking ratio. If they weren’t built to code, they will have to be demolished, and possibly rebuilt, if allowed.

A few years ago a man came to “random” businesses and sued them for not being up to code with ADA. Even our building that we won an award for in 1982 isn’t up to code. It happens. The codes change. This is why during improvements 20% to 100% of the code issues related to ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) are required to be brought up-to-date.

Even on the radio this week, I heard about an issue with a restaurant whose conditional use parking application was in dispute (to share parking) because the city didn’t have a record of the storage they built.

Are you concerned?

Why not call our office (714 – 953 – 6333) or email Tom Riggins for a consultation. Maybe a building survey is enough, but research with the city may be required, too.

What seems more frightening than an axe murderer chasing you after your car overheated and your cell phone just died is totally normal for us. We’re not afraid of the Boogeyman and you shouldn’t be either.