New courthouse elevators leave some in need of a lift

Visitors to Broward County’s new courthouse aren’t just waiting for justice. They’ve also been stuck in long lines waiting for the next elevator.

As of Monday, the last of the judges and courts were finally in the new Fort Lauderdale building that opened in January, about 11⁄2 years behind schedule, and elevator backups had some people complaining about waits of up to half an hour during the busy morning period.

The security line just to get through metal detectors to get into the courthouse snaked outside the building for several hundred feet down Southeast Sixth

Street. That situation improved Wednesday with the use of an additional security checkpoint, officials said.

But there were still long lines at the elevators as people struggled to make their court appointments on time.

Officials say it’s not a design flaw and the delays will be corrected as they work out the kinks of day-to-day traffic patterns at the new $197 million structure.

Attorney Mike Gottlieb skipped the entry lines by entering the courthouse complex from its north wing building near Southeast Third Avenue and taking a walkway to the second floor of the new building.

But he got stuck at the elevators just the same. After waiting 10 minutes to catch one to the fifth floor — one that wasn’t already full of people who had boarded on the first floor — he took an elevator down to the first floor and then stayed on it so he finally could get to the fifth floor.

“It’s like a ‘Seinfeld’ sketch. I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s just nuts,” Gottlieb said.

The old 10-story courthouse had six elevators, plus three others that served its first six floors. The 11-story Palm Beach County Courthouse, built in 1995, has eight public elevators. Broward officials say the new 20-story tower’s eight elevators are sufficient to handle the traffic.

“You try to find out what’s working and what’s not working, and you try to make adjustments,” Assistant County Administrator Alphonso Jefferson said. “This is a work in progress.”

The situation in the new tower is exacerbated because the stairwells are off limits except in emergencies. Visitors in the old courthouse were able to use the stairs, and an inmate who escaped from a courtroom last year used a stairwell to flee the building.

“It does seem like it wasn’t really 100 percent thought out on some issues,” attorney Brad Cohen said of the courthouse. “People are getting on the elevator to go up or down one floor. [The elevators] are stopping on almost every floor.”

Two of the eight elevators were out of service to be “fine-tuned” this week, Jefferson said. One was back in service Tuesday, but the other was still out of service Wednesday.

Jefferson said adjustments have been made to the elevator system. The time elevator doors stay open has been reduced to speed things up. Several elevators will now go directly back to the first floor after unloading passengers, he said, to keep backups in the main lobby to a minimum.

Officials say there’s also a learning curve for visitors. Jefferson said a number of the elevator delays have been caused by people going to the second, third and fourth floors, instead of using the escalators that serve those floors.

Court Administrator Kathleen Pugh said signs need to be put up advising people with business on the lower four floors, as well as people needing access to the walkway to the complex’s north wing building, to use the escalators instead of elevators.

“I knew it would be a challenge, but not this bad,” Pugh said.

JOE CAVARETTA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Elevator backups at Broward County’s new courthouse had some people complaining about waits of up to half an hour during the busy morning period Wednesday.