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To Anyone,
We have an issue here at the college over an occupancy classification and we are looking for any insight that you may have on this issue. The college is in the planning stage of designing and building scholarship housing for women, which will be sponsor by a professional woman's business organization. The housing will be a two-story structure and have seven (7) two person rooms sharing a bathroom between two units on the second floor, one (1) handicap unit with its own bathroom , one (1) resident managers unit with its own bathroom on the first floor, and a shared kitchen. The issue is the design professional wants to classify this type of housing as an R-3 occupancy classification, they are basing this on that it is 16 persons or less and it is a congregate living facility. Which they say would not require a two (2) means of egress from the second floor that only one egress would be required and that could be the main stairs leading to the second floor because the building would also be fired sprinkler. Furthermore, they are stating that they would not be required to provide any type of accessibility access to the second floor as they have provided a handicap unit on the ground floor. We are contending that the occupancy classification should be an R-2 occupancy classification as it is more in line with Sororities and Fraternities housing and not Congregate Living Facilities thus two means of egress would be required. We further contend that the main stairs if the building is fully fire sprinkled could be consider one of the means of egress, but we would want to check with the local fire marshal on what his interpretation would be. We also feel that the design needs to provide some type of accessibility to the second floor regardless of having a handicap unit on the first floor of the building.
These are just some of the issues that we will encounter on this project, as we do not agree yet on a fire suppression hood in the shared kitchen. Therefore, if anyone has any insight to this question or can provide us with a code section we may have missed in our interpretation of this issue the college would appreciate it.
Thanks,

John L. Evans, AIA, CBO
College Architect & Certified Building Official
St. Petersburg College
Phone # (727) 341-3262
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