As most Morgan residents will tell you, the elevators are a constant source of misery and failure.  That 15 minute commute to NYC you paid primo dollars for doesn’t factor in the additional 15 minute wait to get in and out of your apartment because the elevators are broken yet again.

Elevator Outage Log

Date	Duration	Elevators	Notes
10/25/2018	1 day	PE3, PE4	PE3 is intermittent, PE4 flashing OS all day
10/14/2018	3+ hours	PE4	PE4 is stuck on 1 and not responding to calls
9/29/2018	1 day	PE2	Otis truck on site
8/31/2018	Unknown	PE3, PE4	Possible maintenance?
8/6/2018	1+ Hours	PE2, PE4	Otis on site “fixing” things again
7/29/2018	2 days	PE4	PE4 broke again after they said it was fixed.  Also took another elevator out of service since PE4 couldn’t be used for moves.
7/28/2018	1 day	PE4	Took out of service because maintenance “didn’t like a noise they were hearing.”  Can you say “safety issue”?
7/19/2018	1 hour	All	Maintenance in the middle of a week day.
7/9/2018	30+ minutes	All	Fire department on site. Quote from JCFD: “This is the worst building downtown right now”
7/6/2018	2+ hours	All	JCFD on site again, stairwells at 100 degrees, lobby filled with angry residents.
7/5/2018	2+ hours	All except PE1 (12th floor max)	Management blamed this one on the “high temperatures today”.  Today’s high temp was 89.6F and temp at the time of the outage was 81.3F.  A real scorcher…
7/4/2018	1+ hours	All	Just in time to miss the fireworks!
6/21/2018	2 days	PE3 and PE4	Management blames a “burnt contactor.”  Maybe that’s why JCFD trucks are here every few days?
5/30/2018	Unknown	PE4, maybe others	Management blames a “power surge” from “construction across the street”.
4/26/2018	Unknown	All except PE1 (12th floor max)	Management blames the vendor for shutting the elevators down for maintenance.
3/29/2018	1+ weeks	PE3 plus PE4 during the days	Typical wait time to get to the ground floor was 10 to 15 minutes for this entire week.
12/27/2017	2+ days	PE3 and PE4	Management blames the vendor.

Elevator Information

The Morgan at Provost Square is a 38 story apartment building in Jersey City with 417 rental units.  It has a total of 4 elevators in the building, all designed for regular resident use.  There is no freight elevator.  Each elevator is labeled PE1 through PE4:

PE1 – This elevator only services floors 1 through 12.  Higher stories have storage closets where the elevator shaft would be had it been built to full height.  There are a few theories as to why this elevator does not extend to the top, but this blog has not been able to verify any.

PE2 – This elevator is on the same bank (wall) as PE1 and stops at all floors.  It is slightly smaller in size (depth) than PE3 and PE4.

PE3 – This elevator faces PE1 on the opposite bank (wall) and goes to all floors.  It is slightly larger than PE1 and PE2.

PE4 – This elevator shares a bank (wall) with PE3 and is commonly referred to as the “freight” elevator.  In practical terms, the only difference with the other elevators is that it almost always has quilted padding hanging on the walls, and it contains a second door in the rear that opens into the service corridor.  It also frequently gets put into “service” mode – during which it is unavailable for residents due to a move in/move out.

The Problems

After moving in, the elevators are usually the first thing that makes residents question their decision to sign the lease, for a few common reasons.  Some are design flaws, others are the result of poor building management:

• PE1 inexplicably only goes up to floor 12.  This means you only have 3 elevators servicing 27 floors (14 through 38, plus PH1 and PH2), when they are all functioning.
• Floors 1-12 have two elevator controls on opposite walls, one for PE2-4 and one for PE1.  This means residents on floor 1-12 often push both buttons and get in the first one that shows up.  That also means the already slow elevator ride for residents 14 and above gets even slower because of “ghost” stops on lower floors.
• The elevators appear to have little to no coordination between them, so if one elevator is moving in your direction, there is little chance that an elevator in a different bank will arrive, even if it is closer or idle.  This is especially true for PE1 vs. PE2-PE4, which appear to be completely independent systems.
• There is no freight elevator in the building, so PE4 is taken out of service for moving days.  In a building with 417 rental units, people move frequently, so this elevator is often out of service on move days (9 to 5 Monday through Friday).
• Even though this is a new construction building that opened in 2015, some or all of the elevators break multiple times a month.  This is likely due to poor maintenance in the years since the building opened combined with bottom dollar construction and elevator equipment.
• Multiple residents have reported safety issues with the elevators where the car suddenly drops multiple stories and then halts for a minute before resuming.

The end result is that as a resident you have to deal with:

• Extremely long wait times when calling an elevator.  It is not unheard of to wait upwards of 15 minutes for the elevator to arrive.  They will make you late for work.  God help you if you have to walk your dog multiple times a day.
• Unsafe elevators that will suddenly drop or exhibit other weird behavior
• Full elevators, especially when one or more elevators are out of service.  Floors in the upper teens are especially impacted due to not having access to PE1 and cars filling up by the time they get down that far.
• Grumpy residents due to these long standing elevator problems.  Verbal fights have been observed due to short tempers from people waiting 15 minutes for an elevator only for it to arrive packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

Management response to the problems typically ranges from not caring to blaming the heat, the cooling, the power, burnt contactors, the construction across the street, the generators, or the power board.  In other words, to those of us who can read between the lines, poor management and poor maintenance.  Of course, according to management the problem is always, always because of the vendors.