A 15-year deadline is days away for building owners to comply with a law requiring fire sprinklers in all commercial buildings 100 feet or taller, a post-9/11 mandate.
The City Council enacted the new sprinkler laws in 2004, based on the recommendations of the World Trade Center Building Code Task Force, empaneled following the attacks on Lower Manhattan. The law mostly targets structures built before 1984, when the city code required sprinkler systems for commercial towers.
At the time the law was enacted, there were 1,230 office buildings more than 100 feet tall without sprinkler systems, according to city Department of Buildings data. Owners of those buildings could face fines if they don’t submit proof they have installed the systems by July 1.
“The safety improvement for the city as a whole from this is unprecedented,” said Daniel Colombini, a principal and director of fire protection at the engineering firm Goldman Copeland. “This has never been done in the world before, where all of the high-rise office buildings have been made substantially safer.”
Cost and return
New sprinkler systems cost between $5 and $8 per square foot in most non-landmarked buildings, said Drew O’Connor, who oversees the management of a roughly 39 million-square-foot city portfolio for Cushman & Wakefield.
Part of the reason the city gave property owners 15 years to comply with the law is that leases typically turn over every five to 10 years. If landlords have to install sprinklers in an office building while tenants are still in place, O’Connor said the costs can rise to $12 to $20 per square foot.
Colombini compared the sprinkler law to the building emissions legislation the City Council passed last month. The bills will similarly enforce a retroactive requirement on landlords, requiring substantial reductions of fossil-fuel consumption in buildings 25,000 square feet or larger.
The green-energy mandates could cost building owners more than $20 billion total, by one estimate. But there is a chance that some landlords could get a return on that investment through long-term energy savings, Colombini noted. A new sprinkler system offers little in the way of returns, outside of some potential property insurance discounts.
“You’re getting a safer building; it is not a capital transaction,” he said.
Meeting the deadline
A Department of Buildings spokesman said the city has approved extensions for 23 buildings where adding sprinklers is complicated by interior landmark status or structural challenges.
The city has steadily sent notices about the pending deadline and required a status update from all city property holders last year. O’Connor said last week that 99% of the Cushman & Wakefield’s buildings are in compliance, with the rest expected to meet the deadline.
“That said, there have been some 15-year leases or landlords that may have thought this law would be pushed out and waited,” O’Connor said, speaking about buildings outside his portfolio. “So there can be a bit of a last-ditch rush.”
No comments:
Post a Comment