The elevators in Warren Towers run 24 hours a day and experience heavy traffic daily, since the dorm houses around 1,800 residents. As these elevators have aged, they’ve begun to experience more frequent issues, and students have noticed how these technical problems are affecting their daily lives.
Despite students’ complaints, plans for a full replacement are still under discussion. Colin Riley, a BU spokesperson, wrote in an email that a replacement is not in the near future.
Riley wrote that there is constant maintenance and repair of the elevators in all three towers in the building through a full-service agreement with Otis Elevator Company, whose employees are frequently on-campus.
“[Otis Elevators] have assigned senior adjusters, who have more in-depth expertise to diagnose and repair outstanding concerns,” Riley wrote. “In certain cases, custom fabrication of parts or rewinding of motors simply takes a longer time than buying a part. The university typically incurs extra expenses to expedite this type of work to get elevators back in service.”
This is not the first time that students have complained about the facilities at Warren Towers. In early October last year, the downward-moving escalator experienced multiple shutdowns. University officials later explained that the shutdowns were due to maintenance, as the escalators are over a decade old.
Carlos Dominguez, area manager of Warren Towers, said the university is currently looking into replacing not just the elevators, but renovating many parts of Warren Towers.
“[BU is] already overseeing serious planning into addressing not just the elevators, but also the escalators and other things in Warren Towers, and the elevators is obviously paramount to that,” Dominguez said. “You guys will hear official information in the near future.”
Dominguez said the university has brought in designers, architects and third study to help study and assess the potential ways that Warren Towers improved.
“They’re looking into different avenues to resolve this,” Dominguez said.
While plans are in the works to renovate the elevators in Warren Towers, they are more long-term. Dominguez said he knows, based on his work experience, that putting in new elevators would be a multi-million dollar project.
“At a previous job, I spent about $200,000 repairing a piston,” Dominguez said. “Replacing these elevators — we’re talking about a major, major investment. That’s why it has taken so long.”
Replacing the elevators is not just a huge project financially, but it will also take a large amount of time and effort, Riley wrote. He wrote that it requires strategic planning in order for large renovation projects, such as an elevator replacement, to take place.
“There is a lot of planning to develop a scope of work and establish a practical schedule to address the needs of a particular building,” Riley wrote. “Many buildings have programs scheduled a year or more in advance that need to be considered in this planning process. The actual work can take between 90 and 120 days once the parts are on site and the lead time for this equipment can be considerable.”
While small modernizations have been made over the years, such as door replacements in Tower B, it has been over a decade since all the elevators underwent considerable renovations.
“The original equipment was installed in 1966,” Riley wrote. “Tower A was modernized in 1996; Tower B modernized in 1996 with new door equipment completed this month during intersession; and Tower C was modernized in 2001.”
Mengshu Zhang, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences who lives in Warren Towers, said that she’s faced issues with the elevators in the building and thinks it is time for a new round of updates to occur.
“One time, the elevator door kind of froze and [was] hard to open,” Zhang said. “I think they may need to take some time, maybe during the summer or during the winter break to repair these old elevators.”
Sabrina Sladich, a freshman in the College of Communication, said that while she personally hasn’t experienced any technical issues, the elevators are not in the best shape they could be.
“They’re really slow, and they’re really small, so I just feel claustrophobic in them,” Sladich said. “And I feel like they’re not particularly safe or up to date.”
Jeremy Ortiz, a sophomore in CAS, said while they are functioning, there are definitely improvements that can be made to the Warren Towers elevators.
“They work fine from what I’ve experienced, but they could be better,” Ortiz said. “They’re not cramped, but I would assume there’s a lot of students in Warren, so it’s probably inconvenient to take them at some point. They could look better, they don’t look sanitary at all.”
