News

Mar 28, 2024

Lakewood Center North apartment without air conditioning for weeks

by: Melissa Reid Posted: Jul 27, 2023 / 10:00 PM EDT Updated: Jul 27, 2023 / 10:01 PM EDT LAKEWOOD, Ohio (WJW) – The heat advisory is not welcome news to people in one local apartment complex. “It is

by: Melissa Reid

Posted: Jul 27, 2023 / 10:00 PM EDT

Updated: Jul 27, 2023 / 10:01 PM EDT

LAKEWOOD, Ohio (WJW) – The heat advisory is not welcome news to people in one local apartment complex.

“It is very, very hot,” said resident Tony Prusak.

Thursday, the temperature inside Prusak’s Lakewood apartment continued to rise.

“I work from home and today it is 86 degrees in my apartment unit,” said Prusak.

Prusak lives in a luxury apartment at Lakewood Center North on Detroit Avenue. His air conditioning went out almost two weeks ago.

“It just got unbearable inside. The tough part is the windows in the building except for the third floor do not open because this is a conversion building from office space to mixed use,” said Prusak.

He’s not alone. Around 200 residents live on 14 different floors of the high-rise apartment complex.

“Depending on what floor you are on, it could be 84 to 90 degrees right now,” said Prusak.

To add insult to injury, Prusak says both elevators stopped working Wednesday, meaning residents had to go up and down 14 floors of stairs with no air conditioning.

Prusak said the freight elevator was back in service Thursday.

“Residents have been sleeping in their cars, sleeping outside here. The other thing we haven’t talked about is the amount of dogs and cats that are in here. They are suffering, they are panting,” said Prusak.

FOX 8 reached out to Premiere Property Management with Kowit Real Estate for comment regarding the situation.

They released a statement that reads, in part:

“As part of our redevelopment of the property, we installed a brand new state-of-the-art chiller less than 5 years ago, but unfortunately modern HVAC systems work off a computer motherboard. Apparently, through zero fault of ours, that motherboard was fried by an electrical surge. Due to the dreaded supply chain issues, those boards are difficult to get, and we have both worked feverishly to obtain both a new and refurbished board, hoping to actually get both in case this ever happens again. We are told that the new board has made it to Canada for programming by the manufacturer, and we are hopeful the new board gets to us by the end of the week. We have placed fans and temporary AC units in various parts of the building, including our indoor dog park which is currently holding at 73 degrees.”

They go on to say they have staff in the building 24 hours a day.

Submit

Δ

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.