Regulations, inspections, compliance

[Christopher Grannen]

Good afternoon friends

I have been working on getting my mixed use residential upstairs/ commercial storefront ready to open with my wife’s business inside. We live upstairs and are essentially house hacking. The storefront is zoned commercial.

we are inside the city of Chicago, and my question is where I might look for any list of regulations that apply to commercial storefronts. We are first time property owners looking to be as diligent as possible to stay compliant with the city as we open doors to the public.  I am worried that what I don’t know could result in citations in the future, and I would hate for that to be because I was ignorant of the rules. 

some recent bits I have recovered through asking around the past few months:

-Chicago compliant exit signs must be steel (and obviously overpriced)
-an electrician told me that storefronts are required to have a 110v outlet on the ceiling near the storefront window (for window lights I guess??). He noticed ours and remarked on it that it’s good we have it.

Fire extinguishers need to be located and serviced/inspected with a tag to prove it.

I doubt that there is a published place where all these stipulations are laid out (because of course not), but what’s a good resource to find more education on this topic?

thanks a lot!

C