You also mentioned “master tenant.” There really isn’t such a thing, since he is the only one with a contract with the owner, he is the only tenant. Most owners will not allow a tenant to sub lease space without landlord’s approval. As a landlord you should understand all uses to which your property is put and any tenant improvements have to be approved. But here, the property wasn’t zoned for overnight occupancy. We would not allow a tenant to take up permanent residence as an example. Furthermore, the city code would not allow it. The property is commercial and that means people go somewhere else to sleep and bathe. This place in Oakland was a warehouse and it wasn’t sprinklered. Plus it had tenant “improvements” that were not approved by anyone, and they were not “permitted” and inspected.
thanks for the response and the info. I am tempted to wonder if there are different qualities of standards for occupancy-zoned buildings and non-occupancy zoned buildings. I also wonder if the sub leases are reviewed by the owner and the owner (not the master tenant) is responsible for day to day enforcement of the sub lease provisions.
It is interesting that your FD carries out periodic inspections. That would seem to imply to me that the FD inspection process alleviates what would otherwise be a major burden to the master tenant of enforcing fire codes.
I use master tenant only because I don’t have proper vocabulary/terminology. I hope you and others will please pardon my ignorance and/or stupidity (lol). I am just trying to learn what I can from all this.
Also I suspect (as I have mentioned elsewhere in other responses) that Oakland does not require sprinklers unless the property is rezoned residential or hotel, and/or the building is significantly remodeled including a permit process. The permit would trigger the sprinkler upgrade.
I’m thinking that an example of an exception to this would be earthquake structural bracing.