The Board of Building Inspection met 09/15/2021. Board members Mayor Jake Woodford, Director of Public Works Paula Vandehey, City Attorney Christopher Behrens, and Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) were all present. The Board also included a representative from the Fire Department, but he was excused.
The Board took up a variance request regarding an athletic storage building being built at Fox Valley Lutheran High School.
A city staff member explained that the building was a small building like a score box. The first floor of the building is 10 feet off the ground. When they started building the stairs, they were using residential standards which call for a maximum stair height of 8” and a minimum tread depth of 9”; however, it is a commercial property, they needed to build to commercial standards which have a 7” maximum height and an 11” minimum depth. Because the building has already been built, it would be difficult to build stairs that met the commercial code.
Doug, who I took to be the contractor working on the building, elaborated. There is not enough room inside the building. There was only one way he could get the stairs to meet the commercial standard, but to do that he would have to remove a bunch of the floor which would leave only 4” of flooring at the top of the stairs and he would have to install a couple winder treads which he considers dangerous.
City staff had no details to add.
Alderperson Doran, seconded by Director Vandehey, moved that the variance be approved.
Director Vandehey wanted to get a feel for the use of the building. She said that typically a building’s use wouldn’t matter in terms of granting the variance but “I think the idea behind the commercial code is that there would be a lot of people using those stairs.” She asked if they could share how the building would be used.
Doug answered that 349 days out of the year it will be an athletic storage building. They host 8 home soccer games in the fall and 8 in the spring, and those games last for around 3 hours. So, for 16 days during the year for 3 hours per day, the building will house people. Those would include someone running the score, someone announcing the game, and possibly a videographer. There would not be a lot of people in there and the school would be able to control who enters the building. Random people will not be able to go up there and just hang out. Outside of game days, no one would need to go up there and the building would just be used for storage.
Director Vandehey said that typically, when the Board of Building Inspection approves a variance they ask for the person granted the variance to do something. [For example, they might have someone install a bumper pad if a staircase ceiling is too low or add a second railing if appropriate.] In this case, however, staff couldn’t come up with any additional thing that the contractor/school could do. It was a difficult situation and she didn’t see any easy additional changes that could be done, so she thought, in this case, she would support the variance request.
Mayor Woodford asked if the stair tread and rise would be uniform across all steps and if they would have railings.
Doug confirmed that it would have railings and that the stairs would be uniform, just with typical residential measurements instead of commercial measurements.
Alderperson Doran had a process question for staff. When a permit is taken out is it mentioned that they need to follow commercial standards vs residential standards? He wasn’t blaming anyone, but he was curious what caused the mix-up in this situation and if the school/contract had been told they needed to follow commercial standards.
A staff member said that this was a small building that didn’t require a plan review so they didn’t do a review. He had requested a series of plans and some structural calculations when he issued the permit, but he didn’t do a plan review and he didn’t specifically note the stairs at that point. When he saw the building after it had been roughed in, he mentioned to the builders at that time that the stairs needed to follow the commercial code.
Attorney Behrens noted that there was no representative from the Fire Department present. He wondered if the Fire Department had shared any thoughts or concerns regarding this variance request with any other staff members.
No one was aware of any concerns from the Fire Department.
The Board had no further questions or thoughts, and they voted unanimously to approve the variance.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=894278&GUID=1EB2C7A7-B4AF-4BD5-AB1D-7C5F9E557A3F
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