Fixed It! Elevator, Broken For Many Months, Rises Again
Medical building patients who had to climb the stairs express relief
Elevator, goooiiing up.
It may be slow moving — enough that people often still use the stairs to descend — but patients with appointments at the Liliha Medical Building are thrilled the four-story building’s elevator is working again after being broken for what many said was longer than a year.
Among comments heard this week at the building: “Thank the Lord, four floors,” and “They finally fixed the buggah.”
“It was kind of exhausting,” Sia Fononga said of the walk upstairs to the fourth floor as she waited for her partner, who was having an eye exam. “It’s a relief.”
On Oct. 10, three days after Civil Beat wrote about the problem, the elevator was inspected by the agency that signs off on elevator maintenance work, safety and code enforcement: the Boiler and Elevator Inspection Branch of the Hawaiʻi Occupational Safety and Health Division. It has been operating since then.
It took so long to resolve the problem, building manager Geoffrey Suzuki of Colliers Hawaii said in an October interview, because of a dispute between the building’s owners and the elevator vendor.
According to Suzuki, in the case of 1712 Liliha St., the people ultimately responsible for the elevator’s maintenance are actually the medical tenants, because the building is a commercial condominium. That means the tenants, ranging from an eye clinic to primary care physicians, as owners of the condominium units, are responsible for the elevator’s upkeep. They had canceled the contract with the original vendor, Suzuki said, and it took time to hire another.
Representatives of the owners’ association did not return messages seeking comment this week.
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