Gaining Entry : Construction Stance Toughened to Help Disabled

Before the city of Los Angeles would grant the Century City Marriott a permanent occupancy certificate, city inspectors ordered that Braille signs be installed on the control panels of the hotel’s four lobby elevators.

And the old-fashioned wooden gazebo in the courtyard of the 375-room hotel, a nostalgic trace of romance for weddings and photos of newlyweds, was ordered redesigned.

“The gazebo only had access by stairs,” said Los Angeles building inspector Albert Hass. “So I conveyed to the responsible parties on the job that any place an able-bodied person is going, a disabled person has the same right to go.”

Hass’ sentiments reflect a marked turnaround over the last two years in the city’s enforcement of state laws guaranteeing equal access for the disabled.

The city has a special division charged with enforcing barrier-free building codes. And a commission has been established to hear appeals from builders and the disabled of decisions requiring or waiving various provisions in the codes.

Just two years ago the state attorney general’s office threatened to sue Los Angeles because the city’s enforcement of California’s equal-access laws--among the toughest in the nation--was so lax.

“I went out myself and spent three-quarters of a day visiting buildings,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Sam Overton said. “I found the deficiencies the city said didn’t exist did exist.

“I found that most of the city’s report (on enforcement) was false. At that time I wrote a letter to (the city) and said the office of the attorney general didn’t appreciate being misled.”

A direct response to Overton’s letter was establishment of the disabled access division in the city’s Building and Safety Department. Before any construction project begins in Los Angeles now, it must go through two plan checks--one by the Building and Safety Department and another by the disabled access division.

That division determines whether public accommodations from major hotels to automated bank tellers can open. By withholding the required certificates of occupancy, the division has the power to force architects to redesign buildings if they do not provide equal access for the disabled.

State law requires major features such as ramps, wheelchair lifts, handicapped parking and loading spaces. It also requires critical but less noticeable design features such as adequate clearance near doors to allow a person in a wheelchair to more easily open the door, leg space beneath sinks in public bathrooms and Braille markings on elevators.

Los Angeles has hired 15 site inspectors and 10 plan checkers, many of them in wheelchairs themselves, to enforce the code. For the first half of this year, the division reviewed more than 3,100 sets of plans and conducted nearly 7,000 inspections, officials said.

“There was a long history of the building department ignoring our complaints about enforcement,” said disabled activist Bill Jordan, who uses a wheelchair.

Before the disabled access division was organized, “we had a problem that a lot of buildings were slipping through our plan check process,” said Louis Dominguez, director of the mayor’s Office for the Disabled. Building inspectors “were required to check for disabled access, but they didn’t have the expertise. A lot of things were slipping by.”

But no longer.

Builders, architects and the disabled agree that enforcement and compliance are at the highest level in the city’s history. Some builders, however, have begun grumbling that they are victims of nit-picking. And some disabled activists argue that builders are winning too many appeals of code requirements.

‘Transition Period’

“It seems to be a transition period from a time when the city was relatively lax on the enforcement of these laws to a period where they are very, very strict,” building consultant Steven Catalano said.

The missing Braille markings and the gazebo stairs at the Marriott notwithstanding, the hotel stands as a product of the state’s disabled access laws.

State law requires that one of every 25 rooms of the first 100 in new or renovated hotels be accessible. One in 40 of any additional rooms must also include mandated features for the disabled.

The Marriott has 42 rooms--four times the required number--completely accessible to disabled individuals, with handrails in the bathrooms, wide doors for wheelchairs and specially designed balconies. Weight and exercise rooms are accessible, and the hotel swimming pool has a lift that can lower a disabled person into the water.

“A hotel like this has to make sure that they are accessible because they are going to get handicapped customers,” said James Cox, a Marriott administrator.

Making facilities accessible to the disabled is good business, equal-access advocates maintain. They estimate that nearly 100,000 Los Angeles-area residents cannot walk and use either wheelchairs or canes.

“Easy access to buildings doesn’t only benefit individuals with disabilities,” said attorney Harvey Shapiro, a quadriplegic who serves as vice president of the 6-month-old Handicapped Access Appeals Commission, which hears appeals of enforcement decisions.

He pointed out that easy access benefits “the woman who is pregnant or the parent with a stroller. It benefits the worker who has to pull a cart in. In the grand scheme of our environment, (easy access) is not something to irritate someone.”

Renovations a Problem

Developers say they have no problem with designing barrier-free new buildings. But their irritation surfaces when they describe costly access improvements they are forced to make on old buildings they are renovating.

“We had to move a lobby console on the ground floor 3 inches because it didn’t meet code,” said Jock Ebner of Charles Dunn Co., managers of downtown’s Crown Building. The access laws also apply to employees’ work space, and without the additional 3 inches, a worker in a wheelchair could not fit behind console.

“There probably will never be a person behind that desk, but they made us do it,” Ebner said of the large console with its telephone equipment, security devices and television monitors. “Some of the items, frankly, I think go too far.”

Architect Mark Alan Rothenberg agreed that handicap ordinances are no problem in new construction “because you are basically dealing with an empty design. It’s easy to put in those kind of facilities. It’s easy to make them extremely accessible. You can even make them attractive. The problem we get into is in retrofitting buildings.”

Often, older buildings in the city were designed in such a way that making them accessible would require major structural alterations, builders said. These buildings, however, are exempt from equal-access requirements unless they undergo renovation.

Disputes over enforcement of equal-access building codes are resolved by the five-member Handicapped Access Appeals Commission, which has two representatives from the disabled community, two from the construction and development industry and a member at large.

“The commission was set up so it could represent the larger community,” explained John Cropsey, a disabled representative along with attorney Shapiro. “I am a natural ally and I am very sympathetic, but this isn’t a black-and-white situation. We have to look at the interests of the disabled with the interests of the business community.”

‘Strike a Compromise’

Cropsey, who has been confined to a wheelchair since developing multiple sclerosis in 1979, said the commission more often than not has been able “to strike a compromise” on appeals.

“You don’t want to force a small hamburger stand with two employees to spend $50,000 to comply with (equal-access laws),” he said. “That would put them out of business.”

The law allows municipalities to grant waivers to certain parts of the code, providing a developer can provide similar but different means of entry or show that the improvements would place too heavy a financial burden on the business.

A developer who cannot resolve an access issue with the disabled access division can appeal to the commission. Since the division’s founding, 129 appeals have been filed. In 47 of the cases, the appeals were completely granted. In 35 appeals, a conditional permit was issued, which usually means a variation was granted in a way that sticks to the spirit of equal-access requirements while relieving the owner of some unreasonable financial or construction hardship. Twenty appeals were denied, and the others were withdrawn.

Disabled activists, however, claim that the commission is biased toward developers, arguing that more often than not it has granted waivers requested by businessmen.

The commission appears to be “pro-developers” in “numerous incidents” said Patric Mayers, president of the Building Advisory Appeals Board, which hears appeals of Building and Safety Department decisions. “But there are plenty of people in the development world who think it is too tough.”

But Mayers acknowledged that the commission is new, something its own members point to when they are confronted by complaints from disabled people that they are too lenient.

Balance Stressed

“I think fundamentally what we need to achieve is a balance,” Commissioner Shapiro said. “This group as a commission is relatively new and has only been in existence for six months. It is the first commission of its nature in the state. We are going through a period of learning how to apply the law and trying to solve some of the problems that have been neglected in the city.”

And the commission’s chairwoman, attorney Melanie Lomax, maintains that by granting more appeals than denials, her commission is not ignoring the disabled community.

“I consider the disabled community and the plight of the physically challenged to be an extension of the civil rights movement,” she said. “There is no reason that the interests of the business community and the interests of the disabled community can’t coincide.”