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Expert Services

Here are just a few of the Expert Services we have provided for our New York and Connecticut clients:

  • Residential owner-architect disputes, Greenwich, CT (6 projects)
  • Residential owner-contractor disputes, Greenwich and Milford, CT (4 projects)
  • Church renovations and additions, owner-architect dispute, Darien, CT
  • BOMA calculation of usable and rentable areas in a commercial office building, Wilton, CT
  • Evaluation of storm damages to country club buildings, golf course, swimming pools, tennis courts, and sprinkler system caused by Hurricane Sandy, Long Island, NY
  • Defective premises evaluation of a high school athletic field, Westchester, NY
  • Multi-family residential building, owner-contractor dispute, Norwalk, CT 
  • Evaluation of common and limited common areas in a condominium, Greenwich, CT


See Projects

ADA Consulting

The Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, is far-reaching civil rights legislation. It requires owners of places of public accommodation that predate the law (1991) to renovate their buildings to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities as defined in the law and that those accommodations be readily achievable. Reasonable accommodations and readily achievable are carefully defined in the ADA; there are exemptions for architectural barriers, for example, steps at an entrance where the installation of a ramp is impractical, or where the cost of the accommodation is unreasonable. It also allows for accessible solutions that, while not meeting the exact letter of the law, adequately meet the intent of the law, essentially not making the perfect the enemy of the good.


Architect Ira Shapiro provides ADA consulting services to both proactive clients – those who are providing accessibility either as a stand-alone project or as part of a larger renovation – and reactive clients – those responding to a lawsuit. Both require in-depth evaluations of the existing facilities to demonstrate what is readily achievable and what is not


The example below is of a restaurant at the corner of two narrow, busy streets in the West Village in NYC. Proximity to a street planter, light pole, transformer vault grate, and cellar access doors precludes the installation of a permanent ramp on the street.


Other projects include restaurants in Midtown East, Times Square, and Harlem, NYC.


Also, see on the Publications page an article from Forbes Magazine / Media & Entertainment / #Regulation, February 19, 2018, which dealt with ADA compliance issues in Broadway theaters and the current wave of law suits by the same plaintiffs and same attorneys. Architect Ira Shapiro was a contributor.