Laura Glesby photo
Marie takes the stairs up from Building D's garage.
A Bella Vista elevator is once again out of commission, leaving residents of the Fair Haven Heights elderly apartment complex’s Building D to test cardiovascular conditions and mobility challenges while walking up and down the stairs from the ground floor lobby to access their cars.
At Bella Vista, the five-tower Eastern Street housing complex run by the Meriden-based landlord Carabetta Management Co., the only elevator in Building D that reaches the below-ground levels of the building’s parking garage has been out of order since late November.
While the landlord expects the repairs to be complete by Friday afternoon, some tenants have raised concerns about how that elevator is often down for maintenance — and even routine, short-term repairs can leave elderly residents unable to access their vehicles, since only one elevator reaches the underground garage. (There are two elevators in Building D. The one that is currently working does go to the building’s lobby and front exit, but it does not go to the parking garage’s underground levels.)
Update: According to Marie, the Building D tenant featured in this story, the elevator was indeed fixed by the landlord and has been operating without any problems as of Friday, Dec. 9.
Marie, who asked to be identified by her middle name, is one such tenant. The 78-year-old has lived in an apartment on the eighth floor of Building D for 15 years. She said that the elevator began switching in and out of service during the week of Nov. 21, and has been completely offline since Nov. 26.
She said she understands that “the elevators take a beating.” Overall, she’s had a positive experience living at Bella Vista and thinks highly of the complex’s landlord. She loves her apartment at Bella Vista, a warm-hued home filled with glittering tree branches and other seasonal decorations, where she lives with her mischievous parakeet Lovey. “During the pandemic, they took care of us,” she said of Carabetta. She pauses at every window to admire courtyards, trees, and a distant Quinnipiac River.
But the lack of an elevator reaching the parking garage’s lower levels scares her. “I’m afraid I might fall. Somebody else might fall.”
According to Carabetta Senior Vice President Bill Stetson, the elevator had been taken out of service after inspectors discovered water in the pit and determined that some parts needed replacing. Bella Vista’s in-house maintenance team was able to fix the pump and clear out the water, Stetson said. The necessary parts have been acquired as of Thursday, he said, and he expects the repairs to be complete by Friday.
Stetson said that pandemic-induced supply chain snafus have frequently stalled repairs. In the case of a fire alarm upgrade, for instance, “materials we ordered in early spring will not arrive until March of next year. That’s the type of supply chain problems we’re having.”
He added that elevator repairs have slowed in recent years due to staffing shortages. “We have four elevator service companies working on our properties. Without an exception, they all have extreme difficulties hiring and retaining staff,” Stetson said.
This latest elevator outage in Building D comes a year after dozens of Bella Vista tenants from Building E were displaced from their homes because of a blackout.
"It's Really Hard Sometimes"
On an "Out of Order" sign posted on an elevator door, someone scrawled the words "Again" and "So is B.V. management."
Without the elevator, Marie has to choose between parking some distance from the building, which would require her to climb a hill on the way to and from her car, or parking in her usual spot below ground, which would entail a winding flight of stairs.
Marie is 78. She recently survived a triple bypass heart attack, and traversing a hilly distance to her car — let alone to the nearest bus stop — would be too hard on her body, she said.
So for the past two weeks, Marie has been taking the stairs from the building’s ground level to the underground garage, breathing heavily and leaning on the railing, whenever she needs to get groceries or go to the pharmacy. On Wednesday, yellow “Caution: Wet Floor” signs by rainy day puddles narrowed the path upstairs. “It’s really hard sometimes,” she said.
Marie developed a system for when she brings back food from the supermarket, which she tries not to lug up the stairs: she parks in a temporary parking spot outside the Building D entrance, where she’s only allowed to stay for 15 minutes. She hurries upstairs with her groceries and rushes back down, parks the car in her underground permanent spot, and then climbs to the ground floor where the elevator will meet her.
Laura Glesby file photo
That 15-minute rush is made more difficult by the fact that only one elevator is working in the 18-story, 144-unit building. The sole operating elevator is in high demand and occasionally too full to accept more passengers. According to Marie, a security guard was stationed in the elevator last week after some residents began fighting over limited elevator space.
Paramedics frequently arrive at the building, Marie said, and they typically hold the elevator on the floor where someone needs assistance until the emergency at hand is over.
When the elevator’s down, Marie sometimes gets grocery help from a close friend, “if I’m in a pinch.” Her husband and two kids have both passed away, and most of the people she’s close to have mobility challenges, too.
Marie in her eighth-floor apartment.
Another Building D resident, Marilyn Wenzel, said she’s able to take the stairs in order to reach her car, despite a visual impairment. She uses the yellow textured strips on each stair to navigate. She confirmed that the elevator is frequently out of service. “This situation has been going on for years,” she said. “I know it makes it hard for people who have walkers [or] canes that park their cars below.”
You would think, given that Senator Looney and the other politicians hold a pizza party at Bella Vista every two years to drum up votes, that they would fight to ensure the landlord is responsive to the tenants’ needs. If anywhere could use a tenant union, it’s BV