Elevator Complaints Go Up at City Hall

It’s the most common complaint murmured in Los Angeles City Hall’s temporary digs on Main Street: slow elevators.

Long waits and occasional malfunctions are a constant headache for the building’s 1,440 workers, making everyone from council members to clerks late for meetings, shortchanging them on their lunch breaks and making everyone reluctant to trek between floors for all but the most necessary trips.

Enter the controversial remedy--an “official use only” elevator set aside for the mayor, City Council members, some department heads and certain other privileged higher-ups.

Starting in mid-July, the designated official elevator will be locked and off-limits to regular city employees, allowing the privileged few to travel at will.

In fact, it is all part of a plan to upgrade all the elevators.

But this is City Hall, and a perk for the few is not likely to pass unnoticed. The plan has unleashed hosts of rumors, given populist-inclined politicians something to posture about and sent employees into transports of outrage at the prospect of waiting while their superiors ride.

“It sucks,” groused one 10th-floor clerk jostling with a dozen others for an elevator down to lunch. “It’s bad enough that we have to wait. We can’t get home, we can’t get to work. Now this.”

Another woman squished up against the wall joined in: “He [the mayor] is a person just like us,” she said. “Let him ride the elevator just like us.”

The 27-year-old City Hall East building, a rectangular white tower just across the street from the old City Hall building, has always been what city General Services Manager Randall Bacon calls “under-elevatored.”

Previously, the problems were kept in check because there were fewer employees in the building.

But in recent months, all employees in the old City Hall have moved into the City Hall East tower so that the main building could be renovated. Hence, the elevator problem has gone from a vague annoyance to a constant aggravation.

Employees linger for seemingly endless minutes for one of the 12 main elevators, with their institutional vinyl floors and flickering fluorescent lights.

But the reserved elevator will end the days when everyone in the building--from the humblest custodian to the mayor himself--suffers the wait equally.

Moreover, it will serve to divide what until now has been the building’s unofficial commons. In the elevators, gossip flies freely, strangers meet, old friends hook up and just about everyone gets frustrated and asks if it wouldn’t be easier to take the stairs.

On Wednesday, as it became evident that locks were being installed, the elevator talk was all about the “officials only” ride.

Some employees thought the mayor had sought a separate elevator just for himself--a rumor the mayor’s press office staunchly denied.

A council deputy joked that if more than one council member rode at a time, they would form a committee quorum in violation of California’s laws requiring open meetings. Others suspected that the council members, or Ron Deaton, the city’s chief legislative analyst, were behind the plan.

None of the above, Bacon said. City Council President John Ferraro asked that the problem be reviewed. But Bacon said he made the decision to set one lift aside for the simple reason that old City Hall traditionally had a small executive elevator too.

But there are differences. There are many more floors to traverse--18--in the new, temporary building; almost all of the city offices in the old building were on the first three floors.

Moreover, the old City Hall executive lift was left unlocked, and it wasn’t in plain view as it will be now, located right next to a sign telling less fortunate riders to take the stairs for short trips.

Reactions from the council were varied. City Councilwoman Laura Chick was quick to discern an anti-democratic impulse.

“I’m not using it,” she declared. “I’m not sure my rush is more important than other people’s.”

Chick called the slow elevators “the great leveler . . . I’ve met and talked with a whole range of people I’ve never met before,” she said.

But where some saw injustice, others rejoiced. City Councilman Nate Holden gave a thumbs up sign at the news. City Councilman Hal Bernson was also blunt: “I’m not wedded to the idea,” he said, “but if they have an official elevator, I will use it.”

And at least one City Hall worker said the change would eliminate a recurring problem: “What’s bad now,” she said, “is when you get into the elevator with the mayor and don’t recognize him.”