The city may require commercial property owners to tell prospective tenants that they are responsible for making sure the building has a valid certificate of occupancy before setting up shop.
Some property owners and rental agents have criticized the proposed requirement as an added burden on property owners. But others say it would give tenants a fair shot at knowing what they're getting into while they can still do something about it.
Certificates of occupancy are required to show a building is safe and in compliance with all the city codes for the intended use.
Jessie Sanders, deputy director for the city Development Services Department, said that not knowing the certificate-of-occupancy requirements can turn into a headache for business owners when they try to get permits to make changes in a property.
"They'll come in here and try to (get) a certificate of occupancy and sometimes they need to get it for a loan, or for state licensing, or they know it's the right thing to do for insurance," Sanders said.
People are also reading…
"And then they face this mountain of problems. Some people just go away devastated, and others go away and open the business anyway without a certificate of occupancy."
If the proposed changes are adopted later this year, they would require the property owner to get a renter's signature on a disclosure form.
A draft copy of the disclosure form states the lessee would "have been advised to contact the City of Tucson Development Services Department . . . prior to the execution of the lease to determine whether the property may be occupied for my intended use."
It would have to be signed by the property owner and the renter, and allows the city to go after the renter if there are problems with the building later, Sanders said. Right now the city can only require the landlord to bring the property up to code.
"The building codes that we've adopted say that if you have work done without permits, it's the building owner's responsibility, that's who we by law can go after," Sanders said. With the disclosure agreement, the city can address the issue with the responsible party, if it's the business owner, he said.
"It protects both sides," said Councilwoman Nina Trasoff.
That's because the renters know what they're getting into before they sign, and the property owners aren't held responsible for what the renters do during their tenancy.
Trasoff said many property owners tell her they already advise their clients to make sure the property meets city codes for specific types of businesses, so it's not an undue burden.
"All we're asking to do is formalize this to make sure people have that knowledge. We're not asking them to do anything that they don't already tell me they're doing," she said.
But some commercial-property owners say the measure would go too far in requiring occupancy-certificate disclosure while not addressing other problems with the land-use code.
In a letter to other property owners, Nancy McClure, vice president of CB Richard Ellis, urged them to let the council know the measure needs to be part of a larger package.
"Encourage that such an ordinance needs to be part of a comprehensive overhaul of the Land Use Code to make it address ease of use, allow increased density, address legislative obsolescence, parking codes, etc. — we cannot be making these kinds of 'one-off' ordinances without a more comprehensive review of the other issues within the same purview."
In a letter to City Council members, McClure said the proposed ordinance pits "the big/bad landlord against the small business operator."
She said this is not the case, and the measure is unnecessary.
"I would say most in the industry will not only verbally tell a tenant to contact the city for anything from zoning verification for a subject use to the need to obtain a C of O (Certificate of Occupancy), but most of our contractual documents include verbiage that will further detail what is expected of an incoming user of a building. I don't see a need for an additional layer of governmental disclosure requirements," McClure wrote.
The council is scheduled to discuss the topic at its study session Tuesday. The meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. in City Council chambers, 255 W. Alameda St.
