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But We Got it in Writing! I had one client (a partnership of three married couples) who contacted me about an old commercial building they had recently purchased and wanted to remodel to combine an auto-repair shop with a restaurant. This seemed to me an odd combination of functions but I was happy to pursue my client’s interests anyway. As is quite common when I get the call on a project like this, they had already gone into the recently purchased building and started the demolition work, assuming that the building permit would be easy to obtain and not stall their timetable. They showed me a letter that their real-estate agent had obtained from the local Planning Department that said that what they had proposed to do with the property would be feasible. On top of that, the letter referenced a City ordinance that was particular to a very specific area of the City where intensified or changes in usage of existing properties in that area were being allowed with no increase in the parking requirements. Parking design (parking space widths, lengths, driving aisle widths, turning radius issues, etc.) and the number of parking spaces required for different functions, chews up a lot of square footage and is often one of the single largest factors determining what will be left over on the site to actually build or alter the building. Normally, any change in use of an existing building would require the owner to comply with current (read- more restrictive) parking requirements. To essentially get a special break from this requirement was a real benefit and the plans for their project would not have been possible without it. I had never heard of such a thing before but assumed the letter meant it was so. The letter did cite the exact ordinance by number and so the first thing I did was to go online and read the actual text of the ordinance myself. What I found was that the ordinance was limited to lots in this special "zone" that were 15,000 square feet or less. I checked the area of the site and found that it was actually 15,540 square feet. It was 540 square feet too large to qualify for the special exemption to the parking requirements. This would force them to upgrade the parking, drastically reducing, or even eliminating, most of their options. When I pointed this out to the Planning Department official, he was very apologetic, but it didn’t change anything. My client’s proposed project was now not likely feasible. And my main purpose here is not to assign blame or belittle or ridicule anyone involved with the production of that letter. I am not perfect either. Though I strive to be thorough and professional at all times, I do make mistakes occasionally. But the point is, the letter was at the request of a real-estate agent seeking to close an $800,000 deal. The letter was written by a City official with minimal information or research on this particular parcel (the parcel is within the special zone, he just didn’t check the size of that particular parcel, which was quite close to the limit) and the proposed combined use of the existing facility was fine from a Planning Department standpoint. But the Owner purchased this $800,000 property based almost entirely on this letter that said they had the blessing of the City to do what they had proposed. Had the potential buyers sought out the services of someone not seeking to close a six-figure deal, someone genuinely motivated to pursue the interests of his client, someone not burdened daily with an entire City’s worth of requests on parcels, the kind of services that architects provide, they could have fleshed this issue out at a very early stage, for very little money, and saved the themselves from making a huge mistake, or at least enabling them to make a far more educated decision about purchasing the property and what they would need to go through to execute their objectives. An architect would also have pointed out to these potential buyers that the construction and building code aspects of their proposed combination of uses (as opposed to those concerns addressed by the Planning Department) requires a 3-hour fire separation wall between the two functions. This is not that hard to do in a new building, but can be very difficult and expensive to retrofit into an existing building. I subsequently bent over backwards trying to come up with a solution to their parking and other design issues, only to leave behind a rather poorly functioning restaurant and auto repair shop, due to limitations imposed by the newer parking regulations. In the end, the problems were, in my opinion, insurmountable. The last I heard they had hired another architect to try and solve their problems, which may in fact occur, I don't always have the answer to every problem, but at the very least they have lost many months of having to pay the mortgage on that property without generating the income they seek. If you are looking to purchase property with or without existing buildings, my low-cost feasibility analysis may help you avoid these types of pitfalls.
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