Most people sign the lease, then find out what the approval involves.
By then the rent is running and the answer costs more than it needed to. The building you're looking at was approved for a particular use. Turning it into something else — a shop into a café, a warehouse into a childcare centre, an office into a medical practice — changes what the Building Code demands of it.
Fire separation, sanitary facilities, accessible entry and paths of travel, parking, waste, hours, noise. Some buildings get there easily. Some can't get there at all.
Each use brings its own requirements.
Shops, Cafés and Restaurants
Including fitouts that trigger a change of use in their own right.
Medical and Allied Health
Practices, dental and specialist consulting rooms.
Childcare and Early Education
Where planning and regulatory requirements sit on top of each other.
Places of Worship
Places of worship and community facilities.
Warehouse and Industrial
Including conversion of industrial premises to other uses.
Boarding Houses and Co-Living
Class 3 buildings, which require a registered practitioner.
Six things decide it, and one of them decides it first.
Permissibility
Whether the use is permitted in the zone at all. The first question, and sometimes the last.
Parking
On site, or by contribution where council allows it.
Accessibility
Entry, paths of travel and sanitary facilities for the new use.
Fire Safety
For the new building class — often where the real cost sits.
Amenity
Waste, ventilation, noise and hours of operation.
Existing Unapproved Work
Whether anything already in the building complicates the application.
The most valuable half hour is the one before you commit.
Send us the address and what you want to operate, and you'll get a view on whether the premises can realistically get there, and where the significant costs are likely to be.
Boarding houses, co-living and residential care are Class 3.
Apartment buildings are Class 2. Both sit under the Design and Building Practitioners Act, and the documentation must be prepared and declared by a registered practitioner.
Farshid Hosseini is a registered NSW Design Practitioner for Building Design, Class 2 and 3 (DEP0000825), and a Chartered Member of the Building Designers Association of Australia (Registration 3169), with 25 years in building design.
One point of contact across every specialist the application needs.
Planning, BCA and fire, accessibility, acoustics, waste, traffic and parking, and certification. You deal with us; we make sure their advice agrees with itself before it reaches council.
Six steps, in this order, for a reason.
01 Understand
The address, the proposed use and your timeframe.
02 Assess
Permissibility, the pathway, and the obstacles that actually matter.
03 Advise
A written position, including what we cannot promise.
04 Document
Plans and the planning case for the new use.
05 Coordinate
The specialist reports council will require.
06 Lodge and Manage
Through to determination.
Questions operators ask before signing.
Do I always need approval to change the use?
Can I do this under a CDC instead of a DA?
How long will it take?
The building has unapproved work in it. Does that stop me?
Can you advise before I sign the lease?
Do you work outside Sydney?
Send the Address and What You Want to Operate.
You'll get an honest view of the approval pathway and what stands in the way — subject to detailed assessment, with nothing promised that can't be delivered.