after residents spoke out to 10 Tampa Bay News about being stranded for days in the 13-story building.<\/a><\/p>\nResidents had been dealing with the outage since early last week, forcing some to climb more than a dozen flights of stairs to reach their homes. Greg Wasmund, who lives on the 12th floor, said residents began noticing changes shortly after sharing their concerns publicly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey gave us all a $75 Publix gift card, which was nice, but I thought, ‘Well that\u2019s interesting,’\u201d Wasmund said.<\/p>\n
He said the gesture was appreciated, but more importantly, repairs soon followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that you put me on the news, I\u2019m sure helped,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
By Sunday, one of the building\u2019s two elevators was back up and running. In a statement, The Portland said staff also conducted in-person wellness checks, visiting each unit to connect with residents, address concerns and assist with immediate needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain actively engaged on-site and will continue to provide updates as progress continues,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Emanuel Williams, another resident, said the situation had been frustrating, especially the lack of communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we didn\u2019t say anything, it would\u2019ve probably been two weeks before we heard anything,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
He said the outage created serious challenges for some residents, including those with mobility issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw one of our neighbors who had her knees replaced trying to lumber up the stairs. That\u2019s not right. That\u2019s not fair,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
Now, with repairs underway, residents say they are beginning to feel some relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me more relieved that things were getting done and things were happening,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
Still, Wasmund said he believes the response could have come sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it could\u2019ve done quicker and better and more communication,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The second elevator is expected to be back in service sometime this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One elevator at The Portland is back in service after residents raised concerns about being stuck for days.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-204388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}