LAKEWOOD, Ohio — On Friday there was finally some good news for the over 200 residents that live at Center North Luxury Apartments in Lakewood: the air conditioning is back on after three weeks.
The apartment building had been without air conditioning since July 14, coinciding with the hottest stretch we've seen so far this summer. 3News was told that a part needed to fix the cooling center finally came in and has been installed. Residents will get a discount on their rent for the inconvenience.
During the stretch of time that the air conditioning system was out, temperatures in the high-rise building were anywhere from 80 to 90 degrees. Residents were unable to open windows because they're sealed shut.
A temporary chiller was supposed to be a buffer while residents waited for a permanent fix. But the hold up, according to Premiere Property Management (property managers for Center North), was a chiller part called a motherboard, which is in a factory in Canada.
On Wednesday, 3News' Lindsay Buckingham asked Premiere Property Management about the delay with the programming, and received the below response via email:
"The motherboard absolutely cannot be programmed on site. The engineers for our chiller are located in Canada. We offered to fly their engineers down to Cleveland to program, and they indicated it had to be done at the factory. The only way to have the board programmed is in the factory in Canada. We have been told it could be ready by Monday."
Premiere also told Buckingham that they hadn't heard much negative feedback from the residents of Center North during the air conditioning outage, writing:
"It's unfortunate that there are only a handful of residents who don’t understand that we are doing everything we can, and that machines, no matter how new they are, can break down. The vast majority of the tenants see our efforts, understand that the timing is out of our control, and have been great to work with."
3News has since learned that at least 35 residents had expressed displeasure with the a/c situation at Center North.
Premiere Property Management, which is owned by commercial real estate company, Kowit & Company Real Estate Group, is headquartered in Mayfield Heights. 3News Investigator Lynna Lai found that according to court records, Kowit & Company Real Estate has had previous financial troubles, including a history of not paying taxes. Records show that the Ohio Department of Taxation has sued the company seven times in the last six years, winning judgments against Kowit & Company totaling $147,422.
