UPDATED August 15th

AND AGAIN…this happened on Friday, roughly a minute after a resident forcibly holds the door open, Car 5 (serving all floors and the garage levels) goes out of service due to a door related malfunction.

PLEASE STOP FORCING THE DOOR OPEN AND HOLDING IT!

If you need to hold the door open, use the button. (see below)

ORIGINAL POST August 1st

We Appreciate Everyone’s Patience During The Recent Elevator Problems We’ve Had

Particularly this week with Elevator 3 which serves the Lobby, 2nd Floor and Floors 23 to 55. We know many residents rely on the elevators to get them where they’re going, and any delay is annoying.

This week the door operator lock broke on Car 3. This could be a coincidence, but the team at OTIS has said this could very well be from accumulated misuse. The likely cause is riders forcibly opening doors or holding the doors open when they are programmed to automatically close. And we have had failures such as this in the past where we were able to confirm abuse via recorded surveillance.

In this case we don’t have exact dates and times of events where we can confirm any bad behavior, but this type of failure could just be from repeated misuse and it finally just gave out. So, we want to remind everyone not to push doors open or to hold them physically with your hands, arms or feet. If you need to reopen or hold a door open temporarily, use the button intended for that purpose.

If you need to hold the door open for a more lengthy period, such as for a large delivery or work in your unit, then you should consider making a reservation or at the very least consulting with the management team. parktowercondo-mgmt@habitat.com

Holding the door open physically can trigger a safety that will force the elevator out of service. Forcing the door to open or pushing it with your hands and feet when it is in operation, can cause failures and damage. Sometimes serious damage.

Of course it’s also worth mentioning, when someone is holding the doors it is creating a delay for everyone else waiting for the elevator.

In one case many years ago, an inebriated resident was holding open a passenger elevator door, and falling over and pushing it with her feet to keep it open (while waiting for other people coming down the hall). This resulted in almost $4000 in damage to the door operator and board and led to a lengthy outage while parts had to be ordered for repair. The cost of the damage was assessed to the Unit Owner.

So please keep this in mind as you are coming and going – don’t physically hold the elevator doors or force them open in any way.