It said her options were either build a ramp for $100k or settle for $60k. Who can she settle with, and who agrees that she doesn’t need to build a ramp anymore? What happens if someone else comes along and wants a ramp?
>Tran said. “And even if we settle, there’s always the risk of someone else coming around and suing us again.”
Lawyers. Architects. Permits. Construction. Traffic control during construction. Environmental studies. Heck, even archeological studies if it's the right area. Maybe even soil remediation if it's determined there's anything below the ramp, like oil or radon, or who knows what.
Plus, if any of it touches the sidewalk, you might have to pay the city rent every month for as long as the building stands.
100k for a freaking ramp is clearly an absurd distortion.
Glancing at the pic of the front of the business, it looks like they'd need about 5 vertical feet to cover both sets of stairs. To keep a ramp at appropriate grade (1:12), that may consume quite a lot of space. Unless I don't understand grades, 60-ish feet.
Once you add permitting costs, business downtime while the front of your building is gone, and possibly removing big chunks of that patio to make room, $100k doesn't seem that unreasonable. And that door looks narrow too; that may well need to be widened.
If interior renovations are required (bathroom not large enough?) it's easy for things to get very expensive, very fast. And in a 100 year old building, you quite likely also have lead paint and asbestos. A small asbestos remediation can easily run $13k (source: did one).
And if the business is going to be closed for more than a week, don't forget paying your employees. You obviously don't have to, but if you tell your employees you aren't paying them for 3-12 weeks, they probably won't still be there when you reopen.
You're right about what you wrote. The coffeeshop is on a small plot raised pretty high off the ground. The only way you can get a ramp in there which is ADA compliant is by demolishing the patio area, which accounts for half the seating of the coffeeshop itself.