Quick Take
The elevators in two downtown Santa Cruz parking garages have been officially out of service for years, a longtime inconvenience to frequent users. The process to repair the elevators has been taking longer than expected, according to city employees.
The elevators in the Locust Street and Soquel Avenue parking garages in downtown Santa Cruz have been in and out of service for a few years, an inconvenience to downtown residents and frequent users. The city’s parking department is working toward repairing the elevators, but the process has taken longer than expected, said Gaven Hussey, the city’s parking program manager.
Elevators have officially been out of service since last summer, said Hussey. During the height of the COVID pandemic, the elevators were experiencing a lot of service issues, and a vendor was taking too long to secure parts in time to address those issues, he said. Last year, the city secured a new vendor, elevator giant Otis, which completed a full reassessment of the elevators.
Following the reassessment, Hussey said there were two paths the city could take moving forward. The first option was to find the parts the previous vendor couldn’t find, and the second option was to do a full replacement of both elevators.
The only problem was that the costs for either option were a little high for the parking department’s budget, said Hussey.
“So from that, we decided, if we just do the repair on the existing equipment here, we’re going to continue to have this issue. The parts for those existing elevators have become more hard to secure just due to their age,” Hussey said. “So we said, let’s do a full rehab and put new elevators in so they’re current to date, and that are going to be more easy to secure components from moving forward.”
It wasn’t worth it to hunt down parts used in the existing elevators, which have been there since the garages were built. The Locust Street garage was built in 1992 and the Soquel Avenue garage was built in 2000. After receiving an additional assessment from a secondary consultant, Hussey said the city will go through a bidding process for contractors to do the repairs.
Full repairs to the Locust Street garage are expected to cost around $260,000 to $300,000, said Hussey. Repairs to the Soquel Avenue garage are expected to cost approximately $240,000 to $260,000.
But it might still be a while until the elevators can be used – the repair timeline is yet to be determined, said Hussey. Repairs can take anywhere from 10 months to a year, which includes acquiring parts and actual repairs. There is no estimated date for when the repairs will be completed.
The city’s parking department understands the inconvenience the elevators have caused, said Hussey. There are more spaces available for people with disabilities to accommodate their needs.
Hussey said he thinks everyone would’ve wanted the repairs done already, and the constant delay of the repairs is the one thing that’s making this process frustrating.
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