Getting Answers: concerns over broken elevators at Linden Towers in Springfield

SPRINGFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM) - A viewer reached out to our newsroom concerned about her grandmother who lives in a senior living facility in Springfield. It seems an elevator there has been broken for months.

“Something needs to be done about the elevators, you know. It’s been two months now,” said one viewer.

These Western Mass News viewers expressed their frustrations off-camera on Thursday. One of the elevators inside senior living facility, Linden Towers in Springfield, has been out of order for months. The mother and daughter said they are concerned for the safety of not only their 75-year-old relative, but other seniors inside as well.

“My mom, she, she’s got really bad knees. She’s got really bad gout, she’s actually coming up for surgery in September, so that fact that she is up on the thirteenth floor, if the elevators are not working, how is she going to be coming up and down the stairs. She can’t,” one viwer added.

They said visitors and residents have to wait a long time to go up or down a few floors. We were sent a picture of the seats. The viewers explained that they were added by the elevator on Thursday for people waiting for a ride, but they said sometimes, there’s no time to wait.

“Yesterday, they have paramedics come here and it took them a minute to get upstairs to the fourteenth floor and then it took them a few minutes to get back down here, so if there’s really an emergency and if someone needs to get to the hospital, which is right behind the building, they’re not gonna get there in time because the elevators are not working properly,” one resident said.

We asked if they had any questions they wanted to bring to management’s attention. They simply wanted to know, “when are they properly going to fix it?” a viewer asked.

We reached out to Appleton Corporation, which manages Linden Towers and other senior living complexes in our area. President Matt Flink told us the elevator was originally shutdown for planned maintenance. He sent us a statement that read, in part:

“We notified all residents of this planned shutdown and Otis elevator commenced the project on May 15. Soon after completion on June 2, this elevator experienced several outages and Otis began to troubleshoot the issue, shutting the car down on June 10 to prevent entrapments of residents and visitors to the building.”

“The issue was later diagnosed as a faulty drive and Otis ordered a replacement which unfortunately is not a stock item and must be manufactured.”

Flink went on to say that Otis has not given them an estimated date for finally replacing the faulty drive. Western Mass News reached out to Otis for comment and a company spokesperson told us:

“We understand the inconvenience experienced by residents of the Linden Towers and are working to get the elevator back in service as quickly as possible. There is nothing more important to Otis than the safety of our customers, colleagues and the riding public.”