Condominium associations are lobbying Honolulu City Council Chair Tommy Waters to repeal a law that requires high-rise condos to install costly fire sprinkler systems, prompting Waters to seek input from the Waikiki Neighborhood Board.

The mandate can cost condos millions of dollars, resulting in thousands of dollars in assessments for owners of individual units, and has triggered debates about fire safety versus finances, particularly for older residents living on fixed incomes.

Stricter rules, including the installation of fire sprinklers, were prompted by the July 2017 fire at the Marco Polo condominium that killed four people and caused more than $107 million in damage. Marco Polo owners later voted to retrofit the 35-story building.

“There is an ordinance requiring that your building have sprinklers,” Waters told the Waikiki Neighborhood Board at its July 11 meeting. “There are still a lot of buildings without sprinklers. You can get around the sprinkler laws if you have a building and life safety evaluation.

“These things are very, very expensive. People can’t pass them. AOAO (association of apartment owners) lobbyists have asked me to repeal that law. So I want to hear from the residents themselves on whether or not they want it repealed. That’s a big deal.”

Waters did not respond to Honolulu Star-Advertiser requests for further comment. He previously referred to the complex and costly issues facing condos and individual owners in a 2022 email to the Star-Advertiser.

“The fire sprinkler requirements have proven to be very costly and, in some cases, unaffordable for residents in older buildings,” he wrote. “Safety is of utmost importance, and we need to determine how to ensure safer buildings at affordable prices. This is why I am committed to working with stakeholders like the Honolulu Fire Department and the Hawai‘i Council of Associations of Apartment Owners to determine the best path forward. All options are on the table, and my hope is that we can find a workable solution.”

The Honolulu Fire Department said in a statement Wednesday, “The HFD understands the Life Safety Evaluation is costly. We also know the cost of a life is immeasurable and it is the HFD’s mission to continuously advocate for fire safety systems that can prevent the loss of life and property.

“Fire sprinklers help save lives because they are the first line of defense against fires. When fire sprinklers are present, fires are kept to the room of origin 97% of the time. Homes with fire sprinklers result in an 81% lower death rate than in homes without them. Sprinklers reduce the heat, flames, and smoke produced in a fire and sprinklers allow people with more time to escape. Fire sprinklers buy time, and time can be the difference between life and death.”

Other than getting government financial support, options for condo owners appear limited, said Melissa Filek, a real estate broker who owns five condo units and serves on the Waikiki Neighborhood Board and the board of directors of the Waikiki Grand Hotel and is secretary of the board of directors at the Crescent Park Waikiki condo.

Two of her condos are in buildings without sprinklers and the residents are trying to figure out how to proceed and how much it will cost them.

It’s nearly impossible to pass a fire and life safety evaluation without a sprinkler system — and nearly as expensive to make other changes to avoid installing sprinklers, Filek said.

“You get a score based on what you have and don’t have,” she said. “It’s virtually impossible to pass without fire sprinklers and it’s a lot of money just for the inspection. I don’t know anybody that’s been able to opt out of it.”

Asked what she’ll do if the owners vote to install sprinklers — which Filek said could run from $1 million to $6 million — she said she’ll have to consider the cost of her own assessments.

“I’m on the fence to be honest,” she said.

Speaking as a real estate broker, Filek said potential condo buyers would want the assessment paid off since mortgage rates remain high and the options to buy something else that already includes fire sprinklers are spare.

Finances are even more dire for older condo owners in Hawaii, which has a rapidly growing population of residents age 65 and older, many of whom are on a fixed income, said Jeff Merz, who works as an urban planner and also serves on the Waikiki Neighborhood Board.

Merz lives in The Windsor Waikiki condominium building, which had sprinklers installed 20 years ago.

At the age of 57, Merz said that paying for an assessment today would be difficult, “and I’m working full time and it would be a strain for me.”

“That said, everyone agrees that if we can increase safety that’s a good thing,” he said.

Rolf Nordahl, board president of the 10-story, 178-unit Waikiki Grand Hotel, also was board president when the 63-year-old building installed sprinklers in 1986 at a cost of just under $1 million.

Although it qualifies as a hotel, 15 units are owner- occupied, like the one owned by Nordahl, 78. The rest are used as vacation rentals.

There were subsequent kitchen fires in two units that were extinguished by sprinklers.

The first caused sprinklers to gush with 100 gallons of water a minute that quickly poured down the stairwell and flooded the lobby four stories below. The second caused less water damage because the staff had learned how to turn off water to individual floors.

“I’ve lived here 38 years and we’ve had two fires,” Nordahl said. “In both cases the water was considerably more trouble than the fire.”

Just installing the sprinklers proved a challenge.

“It was quite a disturbance,” Nordahl said.

And a handful of unit owners did not respond to requests for permission to enter to install overhead sprinklers, Nordahl said.

“So we actually had to break in with police and install the sprinklers,” he said.

The project was so controversial that once the sprinklers were in place, Nordahl said, “the following year the owners organized and threw me out and threw out the whole board. … The challenge today remains the great expense of retrofitting.”