Mercer Street owner promises elevator fix for aging SoHo artists after six-year lockout

Since 2019, a group of older artists who live high up in an 1800s cast-iron loft building on Mercer Street in SoHo have not been allowed to use its only elevator. Now the owner says the lift should be running again within four weeks.

Square Churchill Mercer LLC, which owns the building, gave the city Loft Board that estimate late last week, following inquiries from Councilmember Christopher Marte, a Manhattan Democrat. Reaching that point took years. At one stage the case sat idle for 16 months, a stall the board’s own backlog helped create.

Four flights of stairs at 89

Donald Lewallen, an 89-year-old visual artist, shares a fourth-floor loft with his wife, the photographer Myrel Chernick, 74. His mobility has been sharply reduced since he had a stroke. Every trip to the street is now a careful, stair-by-stair effort, and an aide who provides his care at home stays close beside him the whole way, holding on to his belt in case he loses his balance. Because the climb leaves him exhausted, he goes out just twice a week. “My goal is to walk down on my own,” he said.

Chernick said she now struggles with the stairs too, and a second outing in one day wears her out. In her view, the ban is designed to drive the tenants away, and she wondered how long they could last in “a fourth floor walkup at our age.”

Roughly six more artist tenants, all in their 70s and 80s, have called the building home since the 1970s. Back then, artists hunting for affordable studio space took over SoHo’s vacant factory buildings. Rents were low, and the tenants paid out of pocket for plumbing, wiring, drywall and kitchens, even though the zoning did not permit residential use. That wave of newcomers gave rise to the city’s Loft Law, under which working artists may make their homes in commercially zoned buildings.

Loft Board backlog and staffing

The Loft Board, which enforces the law, currently has eight members appointed by the mayor. City officials acknowledge that thin staffing there partly explains the Mercer Street delay: just two lawyers were working through tenant complaints from around the city as their number kept rising.

Chernick welcomes the promised repair but is holding off on celebrating. “Let’s see what happens,” she said, “before we get too excited.”