By Gus Saltonstall
A 17-story building on the Upper West Side has an elevator problem.
It has led to parents having to carry children up multiple flights of stairs, seniors and those with mobility issues having to choose whether they can leave their apartment, and emergency services being marooned in the lobby of the building.
The passenger elevator at 145 West 96th Street has not operated since August, 2025. The service elevator, which has operated as its replacement, has broken down approximately 30 times since January of this year. That equates to roughly once every ten days.
Why hasn’t the passenger elevator been repaired or replaced?
The owner of the building says it’s because of a lawsuit filed by a group of rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants in March of 2025, prohibiting the landlord from installing a brand-new, modern elevator in the building. The tenants claim that the installation of a new elevator would result in a “reduction of services.”
Here’s why.
The Upper West Side building is one of the few left in Manhattan that has a chauffeur-driven passenger elevator, which means there is an operator who rides in the elevator and moves it from floor to floor with a crank.
The above-mentioned tenants of the building sued the ownership on March 10, 2025, after the building announced it would be installing an automatic elevator and eliminating the elevator operators.
Tenants argue in the suit that elevator operators do more than control the elevator. The employees act as quasi-doormen to the building and also deliver packages to residents, according to statements from the court documents and made to West Side Rag.
“They are using the lawsuit as an excuse; they can settle at any time,” a resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from building ownership, told WSR. “They are cost-cutting and trying to make our building uninhabitable as a way to get rent-stabilized tenants out.”
The resident tracked how many times the service elevator has been out of commission this year, finding that it had been down on the following days in 2026:
- January 1
- February 4
- February 27
- April 20-26
- June 2
- August 1
- September 17
- For portions of October 26-27
This string of out-of-service days culminated at the end of October, when the service elevator was down for more than two weeks straight from October 28 through November 9.
“I am really concerned for my elderly neighbors and those with limited mobility,” the resident told the Rag, adding that ambulances had been called on days when there was no working elevator in the building, and parents had gotten accustomed to leaving their strollers in the lobby and carrying their children up flights of stairs.
On November 12, the service elevator again went out of service.
“A technician has been dispatched to inspect and repair the elevator as soon as possible,” reads a note from Tri-Hill Management, which manages the building, sent to tenants of 145 West 96th Street on November 12, acquired by WSR. “We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.”
During the most recent extended period without a working elevator, Tri-Hill Management put out chairs and water bottles between floors so residents could rest and rehydrate as they made their way up.
Tri-Hill Management told West Side Rag that the passenger elevator has not been fixed because they are blocked from working on it while the lawsuit makes its way through the court system, and that the service elevator that has been used in the meantime is more than a century old.
“Because the elevator [service] is nearly 100 years old, we were forced to order a custom-fabricated part after the elevator failed last week,” Michael Dougherty, a property manager at Tri-Hill Management, wrote in an email to the Rag. “Although we want to install a new elevator, we have been continuously obstructed in our efforts to do so. We are extremely frustrated at this situation.
“We are ready, willing and able to install modern, new elevators in the building, but we have been stymied by a small group of tenants who have challenged us each step of the way,” he added, while also mentioning that he had literally carried a senior resident up the stairs recently to their apartment. “We have a brand-new elevator cabin literally sitting in the basement of the building waiting to be installed. As soon as the court lifts its order and the State gives us final permission, we will replace the elevator.”
As of Friday morning, the service elevator remains out of operation.
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Kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Makes perfect sense here.
Horrible story. Why can’t the old elevator be operated with an operator in the meantime?
did you not read the article? It’s broken!!
Because the management company refuses to fix it. There is no other reason. An independent consultant said it could be repaired. The court has not said they can’t fix it. But they refuse so they can pit neighbors against each other and get people to move out so they can raise the rent.
The concern that residents have is going from an attended building to an unattended one. This is a legitimate concern.
Thats the lesson you took away from this? Why cant the tenants be reasonable is a better question to ask.
There’s a good number of rent-controlled tenants who mistake the unbelievable luck they had ending up with the deal of a lifetime with being owed the world.
These people put together barely cover the salaries needed to man that elevator and yet are the ones to screw the rest of the building over.
Here are some options:
1. Change the laws so that “these people” as you call them are thrown out on the street.
2. Move to a city that is more satisfactory to your needs with regards to history and housing.
3. Stop investing in buildings / cities which have a history of such laws.
From a free market perspective, YOU are the problem. You seem to think YOU are owed something on your ‘investment’ in New York when you should have read the fine print. — Buyer Beware.
Rest those legs. You’re going to be walking up stairs the rest of your time in the building. Feel free to move if you don’t like it.
From a free market perspective??? Rent control and rent stabilization are about as far from free market as it gets. Yet you defend them on a free market basis?
dude i just live here im not the mayor
The City has an obligation to not defund housing by making it legally impossible to raise money for new things, such as automatic elevators.
A simple ACRIS search (BBL 01851/0005) suggests that the same family has owned the building since at least 1966. While rent control predates 1966, there have been multiple MAJOR laws enacted since then that further entrench these crazy aspects of rent stabilization such as inheriting rent stabilized apartments and nonsensical definitions of diminishment of services (like this).
The City moved the goalposts and effectively took-away this building’s ability to have an elevator like any other building, holding the project hostage as if having an elevator in your building is a government-protected jobs program.
1. Who said anything about throwing people onto the street?
2. What history? People passing down rent-controlled apartments for generations while buying houses elsewhere?
3. So we should stop investing in NYC rather than fix a broken system?
And you’re invoking the free market to defend rent control? Seriously?
So the rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants who pay the least to operate the building (probably less than the actual operating costs) are blocking the installation of modern elevators because they want even more subsidized services from the elevator operators? That’s pretty messed up!
This is a great example of rent stabilization run amok. Automatic elevator technology is 100 years old. Cheap and effective. And they can’t upgrade to it because a group of people are litigating frivolously.
The building owner can install the new elevator and keep the elevator guy as a doorman and actually save money, but they are refusing.
This is what they should do to avoid cutting services– make the elevator attendant a doorman.
I have to think it’s not just the rent regulated tenants who object to going from an attended to an unattended building. My guess is it’s just that the rent regulated tenants are the ones who have a specific legal right to object to that, and therefore that’s why they’re the ones on the lawsuit. As a market rate tenant, I would very much object to my landlord going from an attended building to an unattended building, if I had rented on the assumption I would be in an attended building.
These tenants (all of them) probably have another lawsuit for having an elevator out of service this long. There are regulations about this in a building that’s over five stories. A landlord can’t simply refuse to fix the elevator or leave it unfixed for this long. He has to make accommodations for tenants. And at this point he may owe them rent abatements. An elevator is an essential service. (Yes, by the way, I am a lawyer. And I highly recommend these tenants consult New York cities landlord tenant helpline if they can’t afford a lawyer.)
I was going to write that. What these tenants (and I was a rent-stabilized tenant in another UWS building for 40 years) is doing is just dumb. Install the new one and keep the elevator guy as a doorman.
Devil’s advocate: what if the salary and benefits of said operator is needed to actually pay for an elevator. Do you know what a new elevator costs? In my building it was about $900,000 for new elevators over ten years ago.
A perfect example of cutting off one’s ear to spite one’s face.
Sorry Elevator Operators, your jobs went where the Printing Press worker, the Pages at Hotels, even doctors are now being replaced with AI surgeons. There is no job that is immune from being replaced. Even horses in Central Park are gone.
Good luck with that AI surgeon.
I think I’d risk going without the operation rather than let AI perform it.
I will happily take over their rent controlled apartment, drop the lawsuit, allow the elevator to be installed for everyone in the building, and then I will even carry packages upstairs to my neighbors after the new elevator is installed.
How’s that for being a decent human? Man, boomers can’t get out of here fast enough.
Put me on the list to take a rent controlled apartment as well! These people have already hit the lottery and they still want more. Mamdani’s America
I’m sorry, are you trying to say that all boomers are that entitled?!
The building I grew up in on the UES converted all their elevators many years ago and all the elevator operators were offered (new) positions as doormen for the building and almost all of them accepted and stayed until their retirement.
Right. And the staff here would have taken that offer but it wasn’t made. Tri-hill announced their intent to move toa “digital doorman” system.
It might also be worth noting that the building does not have USPS-approved mailboxes, so the staff deliver mail to each resident’s doormat
These are the details that should have been written in this article. Instead it was framed to make the tenants look unreasonable.
This is an article designed to divide. A building owner singles out only stabilized and controlled tenants as the designated scapegoats; that I’m sure the foundational resentment has nothing to do with the elevator. Tomorrow it will be “tenants complain of cloud in sky and it’s the usual suspects.” Of course the usual bots and new money real estate hair plug crowd flock to the comments section lies flies to.. and work everybody up into a frenzy. I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably going to see a new wave of rent stabilization laws in the next generation the way inequality and inequity is going in this country. I know you see a get rick quick scheme in NYC real estate, but I think it’s time you guys change your financial portfolio and diversify it to maybe Colorado or Idaho.
The articles states:
“group of rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants in March of 2025, ”
Also please do not knock hair-plugs I am hair challenged and find it discriminatory.
I agree with your assessment of the article.
Most rent controlled people moved in in a time when, it seemed, nobody wanted to live in New York. I’m sure there is some place today where nobody wants to live— and the free market encourages one to move there and to take the example of once, chance-taking, bootstrapping, New Yorkers. It is this sort of resiliency that makes New York great (not money). One might get in on the ground floor of making a new place great. (Idaho sounds wonderful) Economic Lesson for today: Some pay in money, and others pay by dodging bullets and junkies on the Upper West Side while their so-called heirs rotted in a failed public school system. In the end, everyone pays.
To be clear, I welcome ALL bootstrappers, my cynicism is reserved for those who think that money can buy dues. Someone here suggested that there are no dues in life, only luck.
The building owner didn’t single them out. The linked lawsuit shows the: “Plaintiffs are twenty-four tenants having either rent-stabilized or rent-controlled
apartments in 143-145 West 96th Street”. If there are others in the building that agree with them, they are not party to the lawsuit.
Lawyer here. The rent stabilized and rent controlled tenants have a legal right to not have services reduced in their building. Market tenants do not have the same rights. My guess is the market rate tenants do in fact agree with them but they are not plaintiffs because they don’t have that same legal right. So the rent controlled and rent stabilized tenants are the face of the lawsuit. Wouldn’t you object to going from an attended building to an unattended building? The elevator operators here do more than just operate the elevator.
Sure but who will pay for the doorman services? Hint it’s not the rent controlled tenants
You think the commentators here are real estate investors?
Yes.
DSA-level “analysis” of portfolio management. It’s not worth the bytes expelled.
And they wonder why they’re on the wrong side of the inequality…
I’m a “market rate” tenant in this building, and I support the fight against management. They have been gaslighting everyone and acting like a slumlord since they took over back in 2024/2025. In fact, they have one of the worst track records in the city, if you look them up.
They never gave anyone a choice or a vote regarding the fate of the Elevator Operators/Doormen – they have said conflicting things about whether or not they would remain if the elevators were replaced, which is why the tenants used the appropriate legal tools at their disposal. Some of us moved into and have stayed in this building because of the unique services it has.
Yeah what floor are you on? 2?
It’s 2026. Do you want a milkman to deliver milk to your door every day too?
Why do they have a right to elevator operators? The owner has the right to get rid of them. And if the tenants don’t like it, they can move. That’s the way the world works. And if that means giving up their precious rent regulated apartment, such is life. An elevator operator is a privilege, not a right. It is not like heat, water, lack of insects, etc.
People would be a lot more supportive of rent regulation if we weeded out people like this, and those who abuse the system. Unfortunately, so many of these people abuse the system and/or live in a fantasy land.
Why should you have a vote over the work assignments of people who you don’t employ? If you want to pay extra for attended elevators and vote on things like this, you may want to consider buying a co-op where you have such rights..
Foisting your opinions on everyone else. Do I get a vote too or are we just allowing these people to decide our fate? What if this goes on for 3 years? What if you have a 1 year old at home? A Puppy? Break your leg? Boo hoo my uber eats doesn’t come to my apartment anymore. Give me a break.
” foresting your opinions on everyone else”? 14596Res is actually a market rate tenant in the building with a direct stake in this. You are not. YOU are the one foisting your opinion on them– you have no dog in this fight.
Why should this be up to a vote? There are plenty of other buildings. Why not move to one that has the services you prefer?
Why should tenants het a vote in the fate or the elevator operators/doormen? They are employed by the building owners. You and the other market rate tenants make decisions about where to live based on the rent and what you get for it. If another building has better amenities at the same price you can move.
Point goes right over your head. It should absolutely not be a vote. The point is that 13 tenants are holding an entire building hostage. Nobody is entitled to a vote at all, it’s landlord’s job and they made the decision to automate. If tenants don’t like that, they can move. What they can’t do is screw everyone over by filing lawsuits and grinding everything to a halt.
What am I missing? This is a rental building owned by someone other than the tenants. Why would (or should) any tenant have a choice or vote regarding the elevators or any services for that matter.
You are missing landlord/tenant law, among other things.
Because law.
I tend to believe management on this one.
Here from the lawsuit is all the progress that the rent controlled people are trying to prevent probably to avoid paying anything for it:
“Plaintiffs’ TRO, and ultimate relief sought, seeks to prevent Defendant from doing the following: 1) removing the doorbell to the inner door of the lobby; 2) installing an intercom system;
3) eliminating the manually operated elevator; 4) installing automatically operated elevators; 5) reducing and eventually eliminating building staff; and 6) eliminating mail and package receipt by building staff and door-to-door delivery of same.”
I did a simple google search on the PLAINTIFF’s and 1 is a Doctor, 1 is deceased, 1 is a Named partner at a Real Estate law firm http://www.CMAlawfirm.com (he is the M in CMA) Specializing in representing tenants… Can you say “CONFLICT”. oh and also has a home in the Hamptons. Are you allowed to have a rent stabilized apartment and a house in the Hamptons? I am sure he knows the ways around the system… That was only 5 minutes on google. Maybe you should give that apartment to @UWS Millenial who will actually appreciate a new elevator.
Great idea, if you own a second home your rent controlled apartment should be reallocated to a hard working millennial
These are all the services tri-hill told us we would be losing. There was no mention of maintaining them at increased cost.
That clarifies the matter a lot, thank you.
I wonder if delivering packages is oart of the elevator operators’ actual duties or just something they did to make some extra money in tips. If its the latter I don’t see how removing them can be considered a reduction in services.
This is terrible. They should let them put in the new elevators. They shouldn’t be held hostage and forced to employ an operator.
Silly landlord whiners. When someone buys a building, they calculate the ROI. Doesn’t matter if it has market, stabilized, or control apartments. The return on investment is the only important number. If the numbers work, they buy. And typically the ROI is gigantic. Otherwise they’d invest in something else. Nobody is subsidizing anybody.
Hear, hear!
Simple economics, all baked into the numbers.
And when did having a multi-tasking elevator operator become a crime, anyway?
Next they’ll be saying locks are too expensive, do away with them.
People come here with their money, make themselves at home and start to rearrange the furniture.
Everyone signs a lease or a contract or a bill of sale.
Is it right that the group who failed to read the fine print should lord over the group which did?
I’ve been a tenant in this building for 11 years. My 1-bedroom, rent-stabilized apt. is my home. I had planned on spending the last portion of my life here in this apt. The other tenants, as well as the staff, have become my family. From the moment TriHill took over the building, my “home” has slowly disappeared. What you read in the article is basically one-sided and fails to represent the full, truthful situation. TriHill has already begun to fire our beloved staff. With installation of new elevators, we would lose security and our mail person. (USPS literally “drops” a box of mail on the lobby table and walks away. Boxes from Fed Ex, UPS, Amazon, and USPS remain piled up in the lobby, unsecured, until each tenant comes down to the lobby and retrieves their items.)
TriHill outright lies. The tenants want the 2 new elevators, but we pay for and expect staff to provide 24/7 security, including security for our mail/packages.
What do you pay for rent? I pay $6000 a month. Are you willing to chip in to pay the operators? Every improvement you ask for is paid for by me, not you.
Is the “24/7 security” included as a required service in your lease?
By renting in this unique, family-like building that has 100 apartments , staff were included. Our 27/7 elevator guys provide that security, along with distributing mail and packages. The front door is locked and strangers are let in and vetted by this same person. The staff man the bldg. every second. It has been that way for 50 years. Honestly, I guess I need to reread my lease. Thank you for being civil in your inquiry.
It will be a required service for the rent stabilized and rent controlled tenants, at the very least, if that was in place when they moved into the building. That’s a legal thing (yes, I’m a lawyer). I’m sure that’s why those tenants are the face of this lawsuit, not because they are the only ones objecting.
I’m confused as to why so many people on this site seem to be so knee-jerk pro-landlord. Tenant protection laws exist for a reason.
Only in NYC.
Call the mayor.
I did and got recommendations on who to call.
try no elevator working for 7 mos
It makes sense to me that the tenants are upset about no longer having a quasi-doorman. Having a doorman is really nice, you feel a lot safer. Why doesn’t the landlord offer to hire the elevator operator as a doorman and also fix the elevator? I found this article to be a bit confusingly written and felt that the interviews leaned biased towards the landlord while not giving space to let the tenants explain their reasoning fully.
I’m honestly so tired of hearing that rent stabilized or rent controlled tenants are spoiled and ungrateful. It’s such a dumb thing to say. Rent stabilization and rent controlled apartments are one of the last ways in which our city is affordable and hospitable to honest people working good jobs. I grew up in a rent stabilized apartment in Chelsea: as the neighborhood got more and more ludicrously expensive, the market rate apartments now are filled with wall street bros, celebrities, and trust fund babies. The rent stabilized neighbors I grew up with were teachers, hair stylists, filmmakers, a radio city hall dancer, a very well known gay rights activist, midwives, professors. These folks run our city and make NYC a beautiful place to live. They deserve to have a nice home and not be pushed out by 21 year olds with trust funds. Rent stabilization is how their ability to live in NYC is protected.
Thank you for you insight. Our building, before TriHill took over, was personal, close. Yes, a family, many of whom have aged in this bldg. We look out for each other, including our beloved staff. We consider ourselves fortunate living in such a special place. No one makes much money; we struggle. But we care. Thank you again. A tenant at 145.
Remember, City taxes are about 40% of the budget of a multi-dwelling building. People have these views about rent stabilized tenants because the non-stabilized folks are the ones paying cold-hard cash for the City government’s operations.
Yeah 21 year old trust fund babies are living on 96th street on the upper west side. Perfect spot to go out in your early 20s. They’re the problem. Some of us are trying to start a family in our 30s and shouldn’t be responsible to foot the bill for a select group of people.
There are plenty of cheap apartments in Staten Island and The Bronx.
Nobody has a divine right to live in an apartment they can’t afford or choose not to pay a fair price for.
You can rant all you want about how unscrupulous the building owner is but when tenants are paying a ridiculously low rent the landlord either does not have the cash flow to properly maintain the building or has no economic incentive to properly maintain the building.
This is the inevitable result of rent regulation. Stories like this NEVER happen in market rate buildings.
Sometimes in life you get what you pay for.
The tenants who are suing, who already enjoy rent abatement, are greedy and inconsiderate. The landlord is willing to do the right thing by installing a modern self service elevator.