Before Quality of Life meeting, a report slamming Barclays Center elevator (plus competing meeting to pull electeds)

Tonight's Atlantic Yards Quality of Life meeting--with a vague agenda and not much new since the previous meeting just five weeks earlier--is probably not the biggest meeting at that hour for public officials like Assemblyman Walter Mosley, Council Member (um, Majority Leader) Laurie Cumbo, and Rep. Yvette Clarke, and their staffers.

They'll be at a Crown Heights Development Town Hall from 6-9 pm, at Full Gospel Assembly at 131 Sullivan Place to discuss five major developments in the southern part of the neighborhood, including two near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Bedford Union Armory.

That out-of-service elevator at the Barclays plaza

That said, there is one piece of news that deserves some discussion tonight. Yesterday, the TransitCenter, a nonprofit organization concerned with--duh--transit, announced The El-Evaders, stating that "eight of New York City’s wealthiest real estate owners are shirking their legal obligation to maintain and operate their subway station elevators at stations adjacent to their properties."

In fact, the worst performing elevator, in the six months tracked from January to June of this year, was the one at the Barclays Center plaza, "operational a pathetic 52% of the time." (This has been the subject of harsh criticism from the New York Daily News, whose Editorial Page editor, Josh Greenman, lives nearby, and has frequently tweeted about it.)

Such privately operated elevators actually make the MTA-maintained elevators "look good by comparison, which themselves need major improvement," according to the Transit Center.

From the Transit Center statement:

Onexim, previously Forest City Ratner owns the worst performer, an elevator that serves the 40,000 daily commuters at Barclays Center-Atlantic Avenue station, home to 10 subway lines and L.I.R.R. commuter rail. That elevator was  barely more than a coin toss – for 88 days of outages.

Onexim is the company owned by Mikhail Prokhorov, whose BSE Global operates the arena. I queried BSE Global and got this statement from spokeswoman Mandy Gutmann:

“We are well aware of the elevator’s operational issues and are frustrated that this is not resolved. The elevator manufacturer went out of business and as a result, the original parts are not available. We are working diligently to correct the problem by bringing in a new operator that will overhaul the parts and service it.”

How fast? "ASAP."

Well, it's been a while. BSE Global is hardly the only offender, but the TransitCenter suggests that a stick, rather than a carrot, might generate results:

New York City Transit also needs to hold real estate developers accountable for their delinquent elevators. Charge them $1,000, $10,000, or $100,000 every day an elevator is out of service — whatever it takes to affect their bottom line. The MTA can’t fix its subway accessibility crisis if it’s unable to reign in these bad actors, and it show it can execute basic contracts if it wants Albany to open its wallet with money to fix our subway.