One Paquin Tower elevator now open to residents after renovation

An elevator that was under renovation at Paquin Tower is now open to residents.

Several elevator outages at Paquin Tower caused some inconvenience for residents over the past few months, but the Columbia Housing Authority tells ABC 17 News that only a few repairs are left for the elevator to be fully functioning by Monday.

Kevin Smith, a four-year resident at Paquin says, “There’s always issues. With it being twelve floors, you can’t have stuff like that break down.”

Paquin Tower is 15 floors high, with two elevators.

Paul Steinhaus with the Columbia Housing Authority told ABC 17 News, “The elevator has been completely renovated and so the final step is renovating that elevator is to replace the call buttons on every floor, those are the buttons you push to pick you up.”

The elevator will be operational for residents to use, with help from CHA officials to manually operate call buttons. Meaning, a agent will be at the top floor and bottom floor to assure residents are getting to their desired location since the call buttons won’t work.

After the renovations on elevator one are complete, elevator two will close to begin the renovation process, which will take several months.

Steinhaus says, “It will be an inconvenience but we feel like we got a good plan.”

CHA hopes to have all additional renovations at Paquin Towers completed by February, which includes replacing the ceiling, floors, tiles, plumbing and utility appliances.

The CHA received low income tax credits to renovate hundreds of rooms at Paquin Towers and other housing projects. Those credits total close to $60 million.