CLEVELAND — The City of Cleveland took an unprecedented step against the owners of three Shaker Square high-rise buildings after inspectors reported all elevators and the fire alarm system at the Vista at Shaker Square Apartments remained offline.
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Cleveland Department of Building and Housing Director Sally Martin O'Toole served Shaker Heights Apartments Owner LLC with a "hazardous conditions violation" and is now having the city hire its own elevator repair company to deal with the safety risk more quickly.
Martin told News 5 that once repairs to the elevators are made, the City of Cleveland will send the apartment building owners the repair bill.
"The Ohio Building Code requires an elevator in buildings four stories or higher, and obviously in these buildings, we do have a lot of elderly, we have people with mobility issues," Martin O'Toole said. "And they have no way to get out to go to the doctor or to get their groceries, and so they are essentially trapped in the building, so this is a very serious issue."
The City of Cleveland and tenants at three high-rise apartment buildings owned by the LLC have been trying to work with property owners for more than 15 months, trying to solve intermittent heating, plumbing, electrical and trash collection issues.
Martin told News 5 the city would hire repair teams at other delinquent Cleveland apartment properties in the future to mitigate potential safety issues for tenants more quickly.
Morelands Group community organization convener Meg Weingart applauded the action taken by the City of Cleveland to better officiate progress at problem apartment buildings citywide.
"This is a terrible safety risk for the people; what if there were a fire and they couldn't get out," Weingart said. "This is amazing that the City of Cleveland, the Department of Building and Housing, and the Law Department have taken this unprecedented step. This issue is chronic throughout the city of elevators broken, and we hear about them all the time."
News 5 reached out to the LLC at its New York City headquarters for this story, but we're still waiting for a response.
Some tenants, like Ron James, have placed their rent in escrow with Cleveland Housing Court until all the issues are resolved. James is demanding building ownership take steps to fund permanent solutions.
"No water, no heat, no electricity sometimes, the elevators don't work," James said. "We try to call them; they hide; we've called New York, and they don't return our calls. They're sitting in New York living the high life, and we're here in Cleveland, Ohio suffering because they don't care."
