In BMCC's Fiterman Hall, Elevators Give Rise to Confusion

BMCC students at an elevator bank in Fiterman Hall. A wall sign at end of ninth-floor elevator bank (inset) explains express and local operation, neither of which exists. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

What’s up with the elevators in Fiterman Hall?

Borough of Manhattan Community College's gleaming, $325 million building opened last August to great fanfare, fulfilling the need for much-needed classroom space that was lost when the original Fiterman Hall was irreparably damaged on Sept. 11, 2001. But getting to those classes via the two banks of high-tech, energy-efficient “skip-stop” elevators has proved confusing for many students, as well as their professors—advanced degrees and all.

“I was going to Fiterman twice a week and I never was able to figure out exactly how it works, which elevator bank to go to,” said a part-time instructor, who taught there last fall. “I knew where to go to get up in the elevator but other than that it was just guessing.”

“The north bank of elevators goes, where does it go? To the third floor and the fifth floor and the seventh floor? I don’t know,” said Douglas Anderson, a music professor who has an office on the 11th floor and teaches on the third. “I can’t quite figure it out from the signs.”

There is an overhead sign at the first-floor lobby entrance to each of the two elevator banks. One says “High-Rise 9- 14,” the other “Mid-Rise 5-8.” They are wrong. The “High-Rise” elevators stop only at 1, 9 and 11, while the “Mid-Rise” ones go to 1, 5 and 7.

“It’s not supposed to say that,” BMCC vice president Scott Anderson told the Trib when asked about the signs. “I don’t remember it saying that.”

Then there are other signs, located on the wall at the far end of each elevator bank on most of the floors. (Escalators and stairs are meant to be used up to the fourth floor of the 14-story building.)

They indicate that the elevators run express at certain times, and local at others.
There are more signs installed in the walls of most floors that light up, indicating whether the elevators are running as local or express.

In fact, there is just one kind of skip-stop operation—neither express nor local. “This is a battle that we had with the designers of the building,” Anderson said. “The college won out, but the designer still gave us what he [wanted].”

The building is designed by Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners, whose website notes that the elevators “operate in express mode during change-of-class periods.”

But the problem, Anderson said, is that class periods are staggered and can’t be coordinated with elevator operation.

“The architects did not understand the nuances of class scheduling. Some are 40 minutes, 55 minutes, two hours long.”

So why was the misleading signage installed anyway?

“Let’s just say that they made their commitments with the sign makers and all that stuff,” Anderson said. “I’m not that concerned. We can get that changed.”
There is another change that Anderson anticipates. Faculty have complained that the skip-stops are a burden when carrying loads of class materials.

He said he’ll add a local. (One service elevator now goes to all the floors.)

Anderson insists that, despite the signage for an elevator system that is not in use, the system works as it should. The lobby doesn’t get crowded, he said, since the average wait time for the 5,000 to 8,000 people who come in and out of the building hourly is only 23 seconds.

(BMCC classrooms are also housed in an office building on Murray Street, where students and staff all agree the school has far worse elevator problems, with waiting times as long as 15 minutes.)

“Students know where to go even if you took all the signs down,” Anderson said. “After the first two weeks of school, they got it down.”

Business student Alamgir Hossain agrees. He recalled getting off on the wrong floor the first time he took a Fiterman elevator. “It took me about 20 minutes to get to my classroom,” he said.

“Once I got used to it, it seems OK.”

Not so for fellow student Luis Manon, who recalled an early elevator experience in which he kept pressing the button of a floor where the car, it turned out, didn't go. He thought he was stuck.

“I was like, you know what, I’m not going to take classes in this Fiterman building because the elevators are too complex,” he said.

“I prefer my main campus,” he added, “because the elevators there go to all the floors.

— Savitri Chankharsingh, a BMCC student, contributed reporting.