Rec Rooms: Extra Space, Extralegal Uses?

The Times takes a look at the practice of making condos more marketable by including “rec rooms,” or basement space that the city considers uninhabitable but which people often use as bedrooms. Cases in point include the ground-floor unit at 415 Clermont Avenue, floorplan above, and two of the units at the development 174 Jackson Street. “You get the most bang for your buck with these kinds of apartments,” says David Maundrell, president of Aptsandlofts.com, which is marketing 174 Jackson, where the lower levels in two of the units are eight-and-a-half-feet high. Maundrell says the rec room space doesn’t count toward the city’s floor-area limits for projects, so developers can squeeze more space out of buildings. Meanwhile, Shahn Andersen, who developed 415 Clermont, says that while the laws against using basement space as bedrooms date back to crackdowns on unsafe conditions in tenements, “is it such a crime when you’ve got a two-family and you want to put Grandma down in the basement?”
‘Rec Room’ Is the New Way to Expand an Apartment [NY Times]