Babylon Would Require Fire Alarms Whenever a Building Changes Use

The Town of Babylon Town Board met on the evening of September 9 and, in a single line on its consensus agenda, set a hearing that will decide what the next tenant fit out costs in every business and industrial district in the town. Resolution No. 643 schedules a public hearing for October 7 at 3 p.m. at Babylon Town Hall, 200 East Sunrise Highway in Lindenhurst, on a local law rewriting Chapter 213, Article XVIII of the town code, the supplementary regulations that sit underneath the zoning map.

The section being rewritten is Section 213-235. It is currently headed Sprinkler Systems. The draft attached to the resolution as Exhibit A retitles it Fire protection systems and expands it from one subject into five, with definitions, fire alarm requirements, a full treatment of assembly occupancies, extinguishing systems at motor fuel dispensing facilities, and the sprinkler language. The exhibit marks additions with underlining and deletions with strikethrough, so some of the sprinkler text carries forward from what is already on the books. What is new is everything wrapped around it.

The trigger is three words long

The phrase that matters appears twice in the draft, once for alarms and once for sprinklers: a building that incurs 40 percent or more reconstruction, alteration, or change in use.

Two of those three have a measuring stick. Reconstruction and alteration are scoped against the building, and a small refresh does not reach 40 percent. Change in use has no threshold at all. It is a category, not a percentage. A bay that held a dry cleaner and is relet to a restaurant has changed use. A light industrial building converted to a gym has changed use. Under the draft, that alone puts the fire protection sections in play regardless of how modest the construction budget looked when the lease was negotiated.

For alarms, the draft at Section 213-235.2 would require an approved manual fire alarm system, automatic fire detection system, or automatic heat detection system in new buildings, built to the current New York State Fire Code and NFPA 72, and in any building hitting that same 40 percent or change of use trigger. Where sprinkler protection is already installed and tied into the building fire alarm system, the automatic heat detection requirement drops away. Detectors are to be smoke detectors unless conditions in the space rule them out.

For sprinklers, Section 213-235.5 would apply the same trigger across a long list of districts: MR Multiple Residence, the E, EA and EB Business districts, MH Planned Motel Hotel, the G, GA and GB Light Industrial districts, H Industrial, PIP Planned Industrial Park, DC Downtown Copiague, and the Wyandanch and Straight Path Corridor form based code district. Systems must be installed to NFPA 13, and where NFPA 13 and the International Fire Code disagree, the stricter rule wins.

Restaurants and bars get named directly

Section 213-235.3 would require both a manual fire alarm system and an automatic fire detection system in Group A assembly occupancies, and the draft then spells out what Group A means rather than leaving it to a code reference. The list runs through banquet halls, night clubs, restaurants, taverns and bars in the A-2 subgroup, and through amusement arcades, art galleries, bowling alleys, community halls, dance halls, exhibition halls, funeral parlors, gymnasiums, indoor pools and tennis courts, lecture halls, libraries, museums, and pool and billiard parlors in A-3. Theaters, concert halls and studios that admit an audience sit in A-1. Arenas and skating rinks are A-4, and grandstands, bleachers and amusement park structures are A-5.

Three exceptions pull small spaces back out. A building or portion used for non accessory assembly with an occupant load under 50 is treated as Group B instead. So is a room used for assembly with an occupant load under 50 that is accessory to another occupancy, and so is an accessory assembly room smaller than 750 square feet. A private dining room at the back of a retail operation is likely outside the requirement. A 60 seat restaurant is not.

Gas stations are handled separately at Section 213-235.4. Any new flammable liquid motor fuel dispensing facility, and any existing one that undergoes reconstruction or alterations, would need an automatic fire extinguishing system using an agent rated for petroleum fires under Chapters 9 and 23 of the state fire code. Unattended self service stations would have to be monitored by an approved supervising station.

What it means for members

If you are negotiating space in Babylon right now, price the fire protection work before you sign, and put in writing who pays for it. A change of use clause in a landlord's standard lease usually addresses permits and approvals; it rarely addresses a sprinkler main and an alarm panel. The cost of running new sprinkler piping through a leased bay lands on whoever the lease says it lands on, and that sentence gets written months before anyone reads the town code.

If you own a building in one of those districts and you are marketing a vacancy, the calculation changes in the other direction. A tenant in the same use class as the last one avoids the trigger. A tenant in a different one may not, and the fit out allowance you were prepared to offer may need to grow. That is worth knowing before you price the space rather than after a prospect walks.

The hearing is October 7 at 3 p.m., and it is the point at which a member can say what the rule does to a real building. Three other business items share that afternoon: the town's draft rules for electric vehicle charging stations, a rezoning application from Bolar Pharmaceutical Co. on Bethpage Road in Copiague, and a rezoning at Little East Neck Road and Millard Avenue in West Babylon that would put 10 apartments next to an existing retail center.