If You Can Make It There

I have mentioned before that my family gravitates to New York City (NYC). And it is not the elevators — we were there when the city was low rise. The picture posted here is what the city looked like when my grandmother came to Ellis Island in the early 1900’s. She was a 16-year-old Hungarian girl alone. Now, the fifth generation of the Sturgeon family (her great-great granddaughters) are living and studying there, in a city that looks very different     (p. 85).

Our focus and special section this month is devoted to the NYC of today. The city is in the midst of a skyscraper boom, having gained 36 million sq. ft. of office space since 9/11, to say nothing of the residential high rises going up. According to one source, there are more miles of elevator shafts (approximately 1,570) than there are miles of subway (about 840) in NYC. Space does not permit us to talk in depth about all the articles submitted for this issue, but we will at least mention them here, because these are about the new builders of NYC in 2018:

• Bobby Schaeffer, CEO of D&D Elevator Maintenance, Inc., writes about his solution to the labor shortage and future growth in The Elevator Learning Center.
• Our Kaija Wilkinson interviewed Nikolai Fedak of New York YIMBY in The Year of Topping Out.
• Ralph M. Newman of Columbia Elevator Products Co., Inc. discusses the use of Zero-Clearance Entrances, allowed only by the NYC code, with CEO L.J. Blaiotta and several local consultants.
• In The Gift, Edward Ferrara tells a charming story of an immigrant from Czechoslovakia who met the U.S. soldier who saved him in World War II while working on elevators in the city.
• Daniel Safarik of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat wrote The Year in NYC Tall Buildings. He highlights the neighborhoods getting big skyline changes.
• Our Angela C. Baldwin writes about Hudson Yards and the High Line, with a unique look at the largest private real-estate development in U.S. history.
• In Mission Accomplished, Wilkinson writes of the Hudson Yards subway station and collaboration of KONE (escalators) and Maspero (inclined lift).
• In another story of partnership, Otis and The Peelle Co. team up to equip a unique, round theater and music hall in Albany’s Egg Gets Modernized Freight Lift with rectangular equipment.
• John Tateossian, in JM Associates/Burnham + Co., gives us an inside look at the National Elevator Insurance program that helps many elevator companies manage risk.
• Connected, Controlled by Winslow Soule and Ricky Williams discusses how IDS/Lift-Net™ is making the Internet of Things available to the elevator industry in some major NYC buildings.
• Rimrock introduces FIELDBOSS Lift 2.5 with new enhancements, some specific to NYC, in Multipurpose Elevator Contractor Management Solution.
• Are you wondering what’s really going on at GAL Manufacturing Corp.? Baldwin has the scoop in Broadening Horizons. The family-owned company’s long legacy of serving the independent industry is finding a new entrepreneurial spirit in its new ownership. Your questions will be answered.
• Even historian Dr. Lee Gray gets into the act with “New York, New York, a Eleva’ Town.” He writes about the Sprague vertical screw electric elevators that were in the Park Row building, once the tallest building in the world (1899-1908).

This is a fully packed issue with insightful reporting in the elevator capital of the world. All of us who worked so hard on this hope you will find much to enjoy. Extra copies will be distributed at the Elevator Conference of New York Supplier Showcase and Buildings NY.