By Gus Saltonstall
Trader Joe’s reopened its store at West 72nd Street and Broadway on Saturday morning after an 116-day closure for elevator, escalator, refrigeration system, and other renovations.
The moment was celebrated by many.
“Glory be!” one commenter penned in response to West Side Rag’s story about the reopening. A different local added, “Hooray! I am grateful for how swiftly they renovated and are reopening.”
However, by midday on Saturday, the Rag was fielding a different type of update about the reopened neighborhood grocery store.
“The escalators are broken at Trader Joe’s after just three hours,” an anonymous Upper West Sider wrote to the Rag.
WSR visited the store around 5 p.m. on its reopening day and confirmed that the escalator that takes customers from the middle floor to the bottom floor was indeed down.
After closing for 116 days for renovations, partly to upgrade the escalators and elevators, an escalator at the West 72nd Street and Broadway Trader Joe’s is out of service on its first day of reopening on Saturday.
Reports are that it worked for 3 hours before breaking down. pic.twitter.com/62t3k3GUA5
— Gus Saltonstall (@GusSaltonstall) September 12, 2026
Put another way, the escalator had become a staircase.
On Monday, we heard the same update. “Sadly, one of the escalators is already broken,” Richard Rubin wrote.
When the Rag went to check for ourselves on Monday, though, all three passenger escalators and both cart escalators within the West 72nd Street location were working.
Trader Joe’s did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Then we got an elevator update.
“Stuck in an elevator on day three. Exclusive to West Side Rag,” Temi Sacks wrote in an email to our inbox. “Today I got stuck in the new elevator at Trader Joe’s. Although there is a standing elevator attendant that requested the elevator go to ground level, the elevator took off and went down to the surprise of the attendant and me. That’s when the doors closed halfway and got stuck. The attendant called for the manager. And since the doors got stuck about two feet open, I jumped off leaving others with their larger store carts stuck behind. This episode from a new elevator three days after opening, was shocking.”
We got another tip from a local who wished to remain anonymous about Trader Joe’s vertical transportation on Monday night: “Monday evening there was already a broken escalator and non-working elevator.”
Clearly, the elevators and escalators at the store go through successful stretches, as once again when the Rag visited the grocer on Tuesday morning, all the vertical transportation was running properly.
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The W125th Street store is way better.