Elevator project provides much needed access in Erb

by Marissa Hochstetler – Horizon News and Features Editor

Have you noticed any weird smells? Or been rudely awaken by loud machinery in the morning, long before you ever wanted to get up? If so, you have been introduced, maybe not so cordially, to the Erb Hall elevator.

According to the Campus Facilities Director, Jim Mason, the elevator project will be completed at the end of October, as long as everything stays on schedule. Construction for the elevator has been going on since May – approximately five months. Mason is excited about the many ways the campus will benefit from having an elevator in Erb.

Mason said, “It will open the upper floors to large equipment that we have never been able to get upstairs before. Student move-in and move-out activities will be much easier for those students living in the upper floors.  Medical access to the upper floors will be much easier. The list goes on and on.”

Mason is also pleased to share that the elevator “is a new generation model called an EcoDisc that uses much less energy (approximately half) of conventional elevators, is much more efficient, and utilizes no hydraulics so there is no oil storage needed.  No equipment room is necessary as the working part of the elevator is above the elevator box itself.” Mason states, “It’s really pretty cool.  It allowed us to fit it into the space that we did.”