BOMA Help Desk: Stairs to mezzanine floors

Renata Orova: Puzl Office HU; July 25, 2023

Dear BOMA,

Our Building generally has 4 floors (Ground Floor, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Floor)
But we additionally build 2 mezzanine floors for Ground Floor and 1st Floor. We call these 0.5 Floor and 1.5 Floor.
We have a kitchen, restrooms, and everything on the main level (GF, 1st Floor), on the upper level, we only have offices and meeting rooms.

For the mezzanine floors to be accessible, we need to build more stairs, these are interior staircases, and some of them belong to one particular tenant, which has an office on the bottom level and has office area on the top (mezzanine) level as well. Some of the staircases are going up from a common area from the main floor, and arrive at a corridor, from where you can access multiple offices. Again, there are no restrooms and kitchen on the mezzanine floor, only offices and meeting rooms. In order to reach the restrooms from above, people need to go down the interior stairs.

My questions are:
1. Can we consider a mezzanine floor as mezzanine by definition, if its area is bigger than 1/3 of the main floor area?
2. If there are more mezzanines on one main level, they should be alltogether smaller than 1/3 of the main area in order to call them mezzanine floor? Or if we have one mezzanine 1/3 area size and an other mezzanine also 1/3, could both work as mezzanine levels? If not, do they count as regular floor?
3. The mezzanines are not accessible from the MVPs, from the main staircases, only via the new interior staricases. How should we treat these staircases? Should we count their areas on bottom and top level too (like it was tenant void), or should we count their area only on the main floor level as a Building Void? These staircases are not to be demolished, othewise there is no other access to the mezzanine.

Thank you!
Renata

David Fingret: Extreme Measures Inc.; July 27, 2023

Hi Renanta,

My responses are below:

1. According to the standard, if the Mezzanine is larger than 1/3 of the Floor Area below, then it is considered a distinct Floor.
2. The 1/3 rule is determined by considering the total area of all the Mezzanines that are associated with a particular Floor below them.
3. The interior staircase that is built to give a specific Occupant private access to/from their Mezzanine would be considered an Occupant Void and simply included in the Occupant's Tenant Area. The other stair you mentioned that leads to a common corridor would be considered a Major Vertical Penetration at the Mezzanine level and a Service Area where it terminates below.

Thanks,
David