Commercial tenant wants to build a/c tower on common property

Hi

This is a NSW strata.

This building houses 3 commercial suites on the ground floor and 24 residential apartments.

One of the tenants of 2 of the commercial suites (they don’t own any apartment or commercial suite) is a medical concern that contains imaging equipment including MRI. Currently that have all of their allotted car space in our communal underbulding garage taken up a/c units required to keep their MRI, x-ray machines, computers etc cool. They also have 3 a/c units housed in a tiny separate space situated on the ground floor that sits right outside the back door that leads to the rubbish bins and the visitor car parking. This space is half bricked and has two sides with fixed metal louvres. The noise and heat emanating from these units is very loud (loud enough to wake me although I have double-glazing in the bedroom windows and wear ear plugs!). They also have another two a/c units situated in the underground garage. One in the wall above an owner-occupier’s separate garage space and the other near the communal garage roller door entry.

The commercial tenant now wants to upgrade their MRI machine but the amount of heat it willl generate exceeds the capacity that their many a/c units can handle. Now they want to build a 2.4 meter a/c cooling tower in the common property garden bed 50m from the back of the residential apartments. This also requires them to install a pipe that is proposed to be attached to the underside of the car park ceiling leading out to the tower.

At th4e extra ordinary general meeting oit was voted to disallow the installation of the a/c tower. The alternate solution proposed by the tenant was to site this monstrosity on the roof above my apartment. The owners voted against this proposal as well.

My feeling is that we the owners have already shown this tenant a large amount of generosity in allowing them the extra a/c units on the common property. The strata corp already has to contribute to the upkeep of the toilets on the ground floor that are exclusively for the use of the commercial tenants and their patients.We have also not as yet chosen to enforce a by law that allows us to set the operating hours for the commercial suites They have not maintained them properly, hence the noise and heat  that is making residents lives a misery, so their promises and guarantees that this a/c tower will fix everything carries no currency with me or the other owners.

Given how much we have already compromised we feel that asking for this installation of the a/c tower on common property is pushing us too far. Did I mention that to do the upgrade of the MRI they have to demolish an entire wall and that it takes weeks of noise, mess and inconvenience? They did this in our building no more than 3 years ago.They have another commercial suite across the road in a building that is wholly commercial, not a resident in sight, and that they just went through the process of upgrading plant in that office that had them pull out the wall of that bulding.

We believe this equipment is so big it now qualifies as light industrial medical equipment. The tenant states this is vital to the operation but we feel the equipment and its requirements have now outgrown this 98% residential building. They are pushing this to mediation but we have no idea how things will go. Would love to get the impartial opinion of the ‘NSW Strata Law guru’. Seriously, what do you think of this situation?

Kindest regards

Pixie