DO NOT LIVE HERE! (My Advice)

SUMMARY: Elevators always break down – Not enough elevator space for this size building – Hot water and A/C sometimes go out – Generally bad A/C system – Building issues are structural and cannot get fixed – General negative vibe – Would not wish my worst enemy to live here. I lived at the W Residences for 2 years. I was attracted by the location and views. The building’s other advantages include:... [more]

SUMMARY: Elevators always break down – Not enough elevator space for this size building – Hot water and A/C sometimes go out – Generally bad A/C system – Building issues are structural and cannot get fixed – General negative vibe – Would not wish my worst enemy to live here. I lived at the W Residences for 2 years. I was attracted by the location and views. The building’s other advantages include: (1) extremely pet-friendly for those looking for that (building holds a pet appreciation week!), (2) trendy, young crowd (many rooftop parties and traffic from the hotel and bar/restaurant in the building), (3) cheerful, engaging front-desk staff who are doing their best. However, the problems are many. It may be useful to understand history. To my understanding, the building was originally designed to be entirely run as a W/Marriott property, with a hotel on the bottom 23 floors, some short-stay residences from 23-30, amenities on 31, luxury condos from 32 through 56, and a rooftop on 57. To my understanding, plans changed and disputes between the developer and Marriott arose through COVID, and long story short, 1-23 are now run as The Washington Hotel by a completely separate company, and 23-56 are all condos (amenities on 31). The hotel and residences do not have a good business relationship. This history at least partly explains the elevator problems in this building. There are two service elevators that can only access Floors 1-30 and are only available for use by 1-23, the hotel; and 3 passenger elevators that actively service 1-23, the hotel. These 3 passenger elevators, to my understanding, were designed to also service 23-30 under the original design, but they do not, because of the bad relationship between the residences and hotel sides of the building. HERE IS THE POINT: THERE ARE ONLY TWO PASSENGER ELEVATORS AND ZERO SERVICE ELEVATORS SERVICING FLOORS 23-56. The fact is: at least one elevator is out of service probably once every ~2-3 days, for a period of ~2-4 hours; and probably once a month for ~2-4 hours, both are down. You can check these numbers: ask management for the elevator performance report the building management generates (after owners insisted on this); the last I saw in spring 2023 showed ~30 hours a month out of service for each of the two elevators. An elevator consulting company was brought in to assess why this is. They reported in a call with owners/residents around June 2022 that: (1) the main problem is simply too much pressure on the elevators. The number of trips the elevators make, if memory serves, is around double what would be expected of a normal building. These trips include ALL traffic: passengers, deliveries, move-ins/outs including heavy furniture, heavy TV station equipment used to film the area around commemorations (e.g. 9/11 anniversary), EVERYTHING—there is no separate service elevator. This obviously wears down the equipment. (2) The kind of proactive maintenance needed is not performed. This may have changed recently with a new elevator management company. (3) It was also raised that some of the equipment may have been damaged during Hurricane Sandy, and it is impossible to repair it to as-new. (4) The problem is a “spiral:” when one elevator goes down, all of the traffic has to use the other one, which places even more strain on it and wears it down even more, and so on. Not to mention: having one relatively small elevator car serve 223 units, and all their people, pets, deliveries, and luggage, that car gets incredibly cramped. I have seen people get stuck for hours and gasp for air when they were freed by the fire department. There is no obvious solution to this problem. In that same June 2022 call, suggestions included building a third shaft on the outside of the building, or “activating” the 3 elevator banks that could serve 23-30 again. The first would obviously take huge time and expense; the second seems unlikely given the bad relationship between the residences and the hotel, which controls those three elevators. There are some other problems. A large bank of units had no hot water for several months. One extremely hot summer evening, the air conditioning all went out, forcing people to stay in nearby hotels. There have been water outages. The air conditioning is the in-wall HVAC units, and they have not been very well-installed, leaving space around the unit for outside air to come in; the apartments do not do a good job staying cool in the summer. I was really quite miserable living here. There are other buildings in the area where I have heard good reviews from friends (the most comparable is probably 88 Greenwich Street). You do what you like; but I just wanted you to know these facts. Feel free to email FormerWNYCDowntownResident@gmail.com if you’d like to learn more or connect. Best of luck with your apartment search! [less]