ELEVATOR QUESITON - Is is necessary if 3 story office building?

[Adam Craig]

Just purchased a completely vacant 3 story, 23K sq foot retail/office building on the edge of a decent downtown area in a medium sized city.

We are going to rehab the whole thing but still undecided about an elevator. It is a 1900 building and never had an elevator. From the few companies I spoke with, they assume somewhere in the 150K range without seeing it.

I would hate to have business on the upper floors that cannot accommodate clients that canon use stairs but is a 150K+ expense worth the result?

Bought the building for 190K. Rehab without the elevator is somewhere between 300-400K. ARV somewhere around 1.4 million conservatively.

[Mitchell Wi]

Because this is your first post, it will not appear until a moderator verifies it. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) enforces elevators in properties in the following criteria:

... Your building is exempt from ADA compliance if your building has fewer than three stories or fewer than 3,000 square feet per floor. However, the exemption doesn’t apply if your building is a i) Professional office of a health care provide ii) Public transit station iii) Airport passenger terminal iv)Shopping center or mall ...

(https://www.buildings.com/arti...)

State and local laws may vary, but from a federal level, given that language, it seems that you would have to comply with this and install an elevator.