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.
Good, so stay away from 79th!
I guess they can, since there is no 79th St store!
So is the 69th and First Avenue store
I think you mean 59th and 1st? I was really confused by your post – then realized it must have been a typo.
Yup. LOVE that TJ’s.
Both escalators were working today. But the fact it’s close to impossible to find sourdough suchs 🙁
Yes, they have moved some stuff around. Maybe a better layout?, but still requires change
They were probably in a rush to open and didn’t test this stuff adequately under any kind of load. It’ll get better.
The City would never have let them reopen if they had not properly tested the equipment.
LOLOLOL ok
It is fondly to be wished.
Right now, I would not want to be the company who worked on the escalator/elevator while Trader Joe’s was closed.
Did they use Trump’s contractor that did the reflecting pool in Washington?
Hysterical….exactly. Very smart comment.
All of these problems could be mitigated by moving to a single-story space located above ground. If only plucky little startup Trader Joe’s had the money.
And rent would be WAAAAAY higher!
TJ’s is not a plucky little start-up. It was founded in the late 1950s and operated as a private company until a privately held German company purchased it. This German company also owns Aldi.
Moving to a single-story space for TJ’s means paying an exorbitant rent, which destroys the relatively lower prices we all enjoy.
Something happened to humanity in recent years that made people incapable of recognizing blatant sarcasm in text.
But look at all the abuse you have to go through in return. Is it really worth it?
She was clearly being sarcastic lol
I think you missed the joke.
Woosh.
I don’t mind the split level either, it’s an efficient use of basement level space
The W 93rd St store is just as you describe. I’,ve grown to love it since May and won’t be going back to 72nd .St
I highly recommend it.
Good!
The escalators are fixed now. It was surprising, teething pains, I guess. What concerns me more is that they seem to have reduced stock in certain sections. I’m not referring to the fact that I know they haven’t fully stocked yet. I’m talking about how certain sections (e.g. cereal, beer, salsa) seem to have less space allotted to them. Also the organization of the store seems confusing, with like items in several different sections. Hopefully all this will be worked out. Also I don’t see many of the old staff, and the new staff is not yet up to speed (or courtesy/helpfulness), but I will cut them some slack for now.
Where is the salsa? I couldn’t find it.
It’s easy to miss, since it’s in a much smaller section, not too far from the chips, but not in the same place where it was. They do have the Fall Harvest Salsa, which was recommended to me last year and which I like very much. It’s only got a limited season.
OK working now but will it be consistent? I unfortunately I hit one of the intermittent nonworking stretches yesterday.
No other store on the planet has this type of media coverage as does this Trader Joe’s on 72nd St. It’s truly astonishing.!
This might seem absurd, and it kinda is, but it’s far from uncommon. Many UWSers will recall that Fairway’s elevators were intractable jalopies for so many years that the store put up a sign saying something like, “We’re aware that the elevator is very bad, apologies, we’re trying our best.”
The Times actually ran a long piece about constantly broken escalators/elevators back in 2008; it’s complex but relates to inadequate amounts of standardized equipment, training and specialists, plus extremely heavy foot traffic, among other things >>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/nyregion/19elevators.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
It was also missing a lot of items so what you went to buy made it a wasted trip
Was in on Monday and the escalator going down was broken, with a worker stating it was broken and “fixed” each of the first 3 days. The cart escalator on the other side also had stopped with a cart midway.
And what’s this “middle floor” you speak of? There’s a ground level and a lower level. Is there some secret members-only upper level they’ve been keeping from us? Is that where they’re displaying all the products that aren’t on the empty, diminished shelf space and sorely lacking freezer areas?
The greatest visible changes seem to be brighter lighting, smaller cashier number oars (so workers can get more steps in trying to have them seen by the spotter?) and lower shelving, so if you’re under 5’4”, merely average height humans can now help you reach items.
If you were looking forward to this grand reopening, congratulations. It’s now as challenging a shopping experience as some of the others we’ve been relegated to during its closure.
I think the “middle” floor would be basically -1 and the lower level-2. Street level is 0.
Tuesday lunchtime 2 escalators were out of service. Unacceptable.
Spoken like a REAL progressive! The nerve.
I think that it must be intentional or a wacky employee wanting to cut down on the crowds.
This just killed it for me. I’m a bit of a claustrophobe, which was the main reason I didn’t like going to the 72nd street store, where you can get buried 2 floors below with no easy egress. Now with this news, I can’t get it out of my mind. That’s it. 72nd Street is done for me.
Good!
I feel exactly as you do. Months before the renovation, I wondered what might happen if there were a fire or an unhinged person at large. Especially in these times, we have to be vigilant dnd not rule out the points you’,ve made. It did have a ecurity guard though. I wil not be returning to 72nd St either.
Hooray!
Oy. I wish it was a smoother re-opening for all involved. A wise and lovely neighbor who used to live in the upper 90s and had moved to the lower 70s and is in her mid 80s… told me that she’s waiting out “the glitches and hiccups till the 72nd branch irons out the issues” (sorry not sorry for the mixed metaphors) and in the meanwhile she will continue to visit “the old hood” in the 90s and say hey to Mani Market in the process. Y’all are welcome, too. We liked having you.
Who preformed the repairs, NYCHA? LOL!
I’m grateful Trader Joe’s is back, even with the kinks. Carrying heavy bags from the other locations was difficult, and paying higher prices at Fairway or Morton Williams was not fun.
Suckers. I’ve never had an urge to step into a Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s shoppers act so highbrow and stuck up to even consider shopping elsewhere. They scoff and hold their noses up at other grocery stores. Get over yourselves. It’s a grocery store.
I shop at Whole Foods, Pioneer and plenty of other stores, and I absolutely love Trader Joe’s. Maybe people just like shopping there? The only one acting “highbrow and stuck up” here seems to be the person looking down on an entire group of shoppers.
I spit up my Spaghetti-Os laughing at this article. I’ll have to wipe off my laptop but it was well worth it.
You TJ shoppers really suffer from a supermarket version of battered wife syndrome.
Wow, good to see so much Schadenfreude on the UWS (or maybe these comments are from Russian A.I. bots?)
I haven’t been back to TJ 72 yet but I’m looking forward to paying $5.49(?) for greek yogurt compared to $12(?) at MW.
I appreciate all the TJ workers who seem to work very hard, and like what they do. They’re a small army of people moving a large quantity of food a block away from my home I’m a fan even though I often pop into other stores for different things.
I’m glad all the people who take the time to post here, especially the ones who lower/reasonable prices are clearly not a motivating factor .
Btw, the apple crumb pie at Citarella is very good.
More like TJ trophy-wife syndrome: I know what I like, it treats me well, and I keep coming back.
Bravo!
Trader Joe’s shoppers are a special breed of pretentious, tote-bag-clutching food snobs who think buying slightly cheaper organic kale makes them morally superior to everyone else. Their precious little “value” lifestyle is so fragile that a couple of broken escalators feel like a personal attack on their carefully curated aesthetic. Maybe it will finally teach them that the world doesn’t revolve around their overpriced frozen mandu and whimsical product names.
I may think I’m morally superior to everyone else, but I would never in a million years buy “slightly cheaper organic kale” (or any kale for that matter). Btw for overpriced frozen mandu (albeit with an incredible selection), go to H Mart nearby.
The Mandu frozen kimchi tidbits is a great product and not very expensive.
I think people are upset with broken escalators, because it makes it harder to bring their dogs into the store.
Apparently a Trader Joe’s tote now signals social status. Louis Vuitton must be devastated.
Yes, Trader Joe’s transporters reflect the ups and downs of contemporary life,
I was there today at around 3:30pm and the down escalator was broken.
They should have called Trump. Just like with the Wollman Rink, he would have had it up and running way ahead of schedule and considerably under budget! They could then rename the place “The Trump Trader Joe’s”. Or better yet, “Trader Trump’s”!
They must have used the contractor that worked on the reflecting pool in DC.
WAIT there are 4 escalators, two from street level to cashier level, and two from cashier level to lower level…….If 3 escalators were working, that means one was out of service on Monday