Elevators in 10-storey apartments of David Matthews broken, tenants complain
SOUTH BEND – Residents of David Matthews’ 10-story luxury apartments at 300 E. LaSalle Ave. have been walking up and down stairs for several days in a row – some of them disabled.
Both of the building’s elevators were out of service. But the dilemma is not new. Over the past three months, one elevator or another has broken down on and off. By all accounts, the main elevator on the west side has been out of service for a full month, and the elevator on the south side has become increasingly erratic in recent weeks.
Residents of the 144-unit building have been without an elevator for four days since Wednesday. And now water pressure has dropped after a pipe burst and flooded the basement on Sunday.
Residents are speaking out, saying they’ve had enough of the lack of maintenance and trustworthy communication. Alex Conley said they’ve tried to work with management internally. Now that construction problems continue, they’ve not only reached out to the media this week. Some of them also wrote negative reviews on Google on Tuesday.
“They’re frustrated, and rightly so,” Matthews said Wednesday in response to The Tribune about the elevators. “We’re frustrated too.”
He said technicians from Schindler, the company that installed the elevators, would make a permanent repair to the elevators on Wednesday. Later that afternoon, however, residents received an email from the administration saying the repair would have to wait at least a day – the needed replacement part had not yet arrived.
Genesis Alonso, 27, now has to climb at least two flights of stairs to get to her car in the parking garage, even though she’s not allowed to climb stairs as she recovers from a Caesarean section a month ago. But with her newborn in her stroller, she’s summoning the strength – luckily without injury so far – to drive her 7-year-old daughter to school and back home.
Matt Reum, on the ninth floor, endures a “huge, lengthy procedure” to be able to go down to the parking garage while he still gets used to the prosthetic leg.
The garage takes up the first four floors, and the apartments are located on the fifth floor and above.
Conley, another tenant on the ninth floor, says the problems with the elevators have been going on for over a year. However, Matthews himself said, “We’ve had problems with the elevators since they were installed.”
The building was opened only a few years ago.
Tenants like Jody Warren suspect that Matthews’ widely publicized financial problems with the building may have prevented him from conducting adequate maintenance.
As The Tribune reported, the South Bend City Council in June rejected Matthews’ request to modify a tax abatement. At the time, his company, Commerce Center Development LLC, owed about $787,000 in property taxes on the building. He had asked the City Council for an extension that would forgive him most of those taxes, given the January 2017 agreement with Matthews that provided an estimated $5.8 million in tax abatements over 10 years.
June 2024: South Bend City Council rejects developer David Matthews’ request for tax exemption for high-rise buildings
So he will pay nearly $4 million more in taxes from 2021 to 2031 than he projected when he took the 2017 tax cut.
He is now also facing a lawsuit from the city seeking $7.5 million in repayment for delaying the opening of a grocery store in the building.
However, Matthews insists that these issues have no impact on maintenance.
He said that the elevators were under warranty and that he had a prepaid maintenance contract with Schindler.
Still, Warren says he often talks with repair technicians and that his statements don’t always match what the property manager says.
Warren speaks frequently with Matthews and relays information to about 24 tenants he has met. Matthews disputes claims that management is unresponsive, saying it frequently emails residents. But residents like Reum say the emails are vague and do not contain complete answers.
Matthews also said staff would help tenants carry things up and down the stairs while elevators are out of service.
He said Schindler had come by several times over the months to repair the elevators, but only recently did a technician from another state discover the real problem: a missing line of code in the electronic configuration.
The technician put the elevators back into operation for one day last weekend.
The burst pipe then flooded the elevator shafts and damaged an electronic sensor.
A water pump on site is currently broken and is scheduled to be repaired Friday, Matthews said. Conley said he can still take a shower, although water pressure on the ninth floor is half what it normally is. Matthews countered that the pressure is similar to that in some homes – just not at luxury levels.
When asked about the future of the financially troubled building, Matthews said Wednesday: “We’re trying to figure that out.”
Would he sell the building? He replied, “We don’t know what we can do.”
South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or [email protected].
