Equipping apartment buildings with fire sprinkler systems seems not only like a good safety measure but also a good business decision.

The city’s Fire Code Board of Appeals plans to start work next month on reviewing a new fire code that would require sprinklers in all new buildings with more than two living units. Local developers, of course, will be interested in exactly where city officials decide to draw the line on the sprinkler requirement. Although it makes perfect sense to require sprinklers in large, multi-story apartment complexes, it might be a bit extreme in, for instance, a triplex in which all the units had ground-level access.

And, although it would be nice to provide this added level of safety in every apartment complex in town, the code is not expected to require apartment owners to retrofit all existing buildings in town with a sprinkler system. The cost to add the sprinklers to an existing building could be as much as double the cost to include them in new construction.

Many apartment owners might consider that expense prohibitive, but, in the long run, it actually might be a good investment. Lawrence Fire Marshal Rich Barr told the Journal-World last week that the fire department already gets calls every year from parents who want to know whether the buildings where their children rent apartments are equipped with sprinklers.

How much more would renters be willing to pay each month to have the comfort of knowing a fire sprinkler system would protect them from the kind of catastrophic fire that killed three people at Boardwalk Apartments this year? This seems like a case in which consumer demand might speak as loudly or even more loudly to apartment owners than the city’s code.