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NEWS
| October 15, 2004
Maintenance
Architecture Building elevators receive
repairs
Upgrades are being made after
student complaints about malfunctions.
By James
McGarrigle
Contributor to The Shorthorn
Technicians are in the process of repairing the second of two elevators
at the School of Architecture following students’ complaints.
Service calls cited technical problems with both elevators and lodged
complaints of slowness, poor responsiveness of the doors and failure
to stop at specified floors.
Having being made aware of the problem by a student Wednesday afternoon,
physical plant staff contacted OTIS technicians to investigate the
problem first thing Thursday morning.
Larry Harrison, the physical plant associate director overseeing
the modernization initiative for the elevators on campus, stated
that the right elevator has now been fixed and the other should
be made operational sometime today after a part had to be ordered
overnight.
Architecture graduate student Dennis Isoe said the elevators have
been a constant thorn in his side during his time here.
“UTA is one of the best design schools around, so I think
we should have the best facilities as far as elevators are concerned,”
he said. “I think it’s a total failure because we pay
a lot of money, and tuition has been raised, so we should expect
the best.”
Isoe said one of his chief concerns is that students now make regular
use of the fire escape staircases, which he thinks is unsafe. He
said that only one of the two elevators functions reliably, and
with 600 students in the department, he is often forced to climb
three flights of stairs, which he equates to a good workout at the
gym.
Isoe said he believes his concerns are shared by the majority of
students at the school. Architecture senior Ruben Garcia agrees.
“Carrying big models up to the fourth floor is a big inconvenience,”
he said.
Harrison has been prioritizing the modernization process based on
a 2001 service report by the independent company Lurch Bates and
Associates. Of the 56 campus elevators marked for modernization
in the report, 31 have been upgraded at a cost of roughly $3.5 million.
Harrison said the physical plant is in the process of renovating
an additional 13, which will include those in the Architecture Building.
The bid for the modernization contract opens Monday.
“People lose sight of the fact that the elevators we have
are used hard,” Harrison said. “It’s not like
a normal office building where they are used at two key times of
day. Our use is four, five or six times that of a normal elevator.”
Although elevators in the Architecture Building are scheduled for
modernization in this next batch, they are listed as a lower priority
behind five buildings such as the Nanofab Center, which contains
just one elevator.
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