For the past 15 years, a storage locker beside Joani Chell’s condo parking spot has been a critical part of her daily routine.
As a makeup artist, she often gets calls the night before for jobs, then makes an early start by stopping by her locker to pack up the equipment she needs.
“[I get] all my stuff out and get it in the car. And a lot of it is very heavy, so I can’t be lugging it up and down, up and down,” she said.
But that’s exactly what Chell will have to start doing — she and her neighbours at Edge Lofts, located at 625 Queen Street E., were told by the property manager their wire mesh storage lockers violated Ontario’s Fire Code, and would need to be cleared out by early August.
“It’s all going to end up in my unit, so it’s going to be a hoarder’s palace, a fire hazard,” said Chell, who says she paid $30,000 combined for her parking spot and locker unit before moving in.
“We did spend a hell of a lot of money.”
To get clarity on how residents ended up paying for storage lockers they can’t legally use, CBC Toronto reached out to the building’s property management team and the condo’s Board of Directors.
The property manager declined to comment on the nature of the violation and one of the condo’s Board of Directors did not respond to repeated interview requests.
CBC Toronto also reached out to Streetcar Developments, responsible for the building’s construction, but did not hear back.
Toronto Fire, however, was able to give general details on what exactly makes storage lockers like Chell’s in violation of the province’s fire code.
“If something is designed and constructed as a parking garage, they’re not allowed to sell that space as … storage locker space,” said Harry Tchalikian, acting division chief in the inspections and enforcement department at Toronto Fire.
Condo storage rooms and garages for vehicles each have separate, specific rules that govern their sprinkler systems and fire separation requirements, Tchalikian said.
In cases like 625 Queen Street E., in which wire mesh compartments were built directly into the parking garage, leading to domestic storage packed in alongside cars, “you’ve lost control of the combustible content,” he said.
“It should not have been sold to her as a free-use storage space at all,” said Tchalikian of Chell.
So how were storage lockers like this built and sold in the first place?
Michele Farley, a fire consultant who assists building owners and managers with Ontario Fire Code retrofits, says these lockers have been built for decades and operate in a kind of “grey zone.”
Farley explained inspectors might give the lockers the green light during an inspection if the lockers still sitting empty. Sometimes they’re also not completely identified or mislabelled on architectural plans.
“Another inspector could come in literally the next day when they’re filled and say … ‘you can’t have them, take them out,'” she said.
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According to the City of Toronto, that could be what happened here.
City spokesperson Kalinka Madej told CBC Toronto that on the original plans for 625 Queen St. E, the storage areas built beside parking spaces were labelled as “bicycle storage.”
Using the cages for bicycles or scooters is perfectly legal, says Tchalikian. He said it’s a “common-sense exception” to the edict that garages contain cars and cars only.
In a letter sent to Chell and her neighbours this summer by their property manager, they were told the condo corporation is seeking legal advice on “obligations and potential options moving forward.”
But as it turns out, 625 Queen E. is far from the only building turning to lawyers over this problem.
Patrick Greco, a partner in the condominium law group at Shibley Righton LLP, says he’s seen a “rising number” of cases like this, in which a condo fire inspection leads to an order to remove parking-adjacent storage lockers.
Some of those condominium corporations become his clients, as he attempts to negotiate with the authorities and, failing that, appeal the order to remove the lockers or even escalate the issue to the province’s Fire Safety Commission.
Typically, he says, the best outcome a building can hope for is “a list of non-combustibles that may be permitted to stay in the cages, things like bicycles, golf clubs, standard outdoor recreation items.”
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In a situation where a condominium has these kinds of lockers but has yet to run into problems with the fire department, Greco advises a “preemptive” approach, including making sure the lockers are neat and free of combustible materials, and potentially reaching out to Toronto Fire to discuss options.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Greco said.
As for Farley, she would like to see a consistent response to the lockers. Instead of having to negotiate each building, there should be a “common ground that says if you have them, this is how they have to be maintained,” she says.
The problem, she added, isn’t going away anytime soon: “There’s hundreds and hundreds of buildings with cage lockers in them.”
