This Too Shall Pass

Our focus this month is on the region of New York — and the stories poured in. Many reflected your author’s thoughts in this column over the past three-four months, i.e., office buildings are dead, landlords are nervous and banks are tightening the screws. I even saw a video this week from The Wall Street Journal about how difficult it is to convert office buildings to residential. But our industry is amazingly adaptable. I’m old enough to have lived through many changes: When there are no new installs, we do mods and repair. When there are no mods, we sell and perform maintenance, which is the lifeblood of our industry. Now, we are experimenting with flexible buildings and vertical transportation (VT). I can still hear my father saying, “This too shall pass.” Change is inevitable, and the VT industry will adapt and thrive. As for the New York region, we have five articles and a feature. 

• Shifting Gears by Kaija Wilkinson. KONE and Schindler executives provide insight into the NYC property and VT market. With little new development in office buildings, both are focused on infrastructure, modernization and repurposing buildings.
• Elevating “The Heights” by Christopher Rosario. The elevators in Radio Tower and Hotel, a colorful vertical village, reflect the personality of the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights.
• Bespoke Birdcage Lift by Kathleen Farrell. A classic home in Chester, New York, gets an artful residential elevator from Artisan Elevators (a division of Nationwide Lifts).
• Niching Down by Lindsay Fletcher. This company profile looks at Fujitec’s largest office, servicing New York and New Jersey. It is currently involved in converting an office building into residential.
• Empire State of Mind by Philip Grone. The author, who is National Elevator Industry Inc.’s vice president of Government Affairs, writes about licensing in New York state and the challenges of NYC, which leads the nation in deviations from ASME A17.1/CSA B44.
• The Elevators of 50 Hudson Yards by TK Elevator (TKE) and Related Cos. With more office space than all but three buildings in NYC, Foster + Partners designed 50 Hudson Yards to anticipate future change. It is also the first tower in the U.S. to use TKE’s TWIN system, featuring two elevators operating independently in a single shaft.

In addition to all of the above, we have the 11th Annual Photo Contest. This is one of my favorite issues. It allows for a lot of bragging rights. This year, we had more photos entered than ever before — from every corner of the world. We added a new category — Factories/Company Facilities — and expanded Illustrations to include AI. The nicest part is that we have a wealth of cover possibilities.

We feature several events this month:

• NAEC 2023 Spring Educational Conference. Held in Waikoloa Beach in Hawaii, it featured Polynesian entertainment and many outdoor activities.
• ExpoElevador 2023 by Carmen Maldacena. After a five-year absence, the event in São Paulo, Brazil, drew more than 4,000 visitors.
• “A Slam Dunk” in Vegas by Kaija Wilkinson. The International Association of Elevator Consultants’ Forum at the M Resort Spa Casino was very successful. Education included sessions on California code changes, pit safety, DLM (door lock monitoring) and elevator life cycles. 

Finally, we offer an excellent Continuing Education piece: Manual Release of Brakes in MRLs and Its Challenges by Lakshmanan Raja. Releasing brakes manually should be a last resort, the author says, and MRLs present a unique challenge. We are also grateful to Dave Smarte and Ray Downs for making sure we included a safety sidebar with this article. Of course, there’s lots more here, but that’s all from me for now. Enjoy, and either way let me know at ricia@elevatorworld.com.