Broken elevators, unreliable Internet connection and constant construction: These are some of the problems students living in the GrandMarc at Westberry Place said they have encountered since the complex opened in August.”The first weekend I was here I got stuck on the elevator for three hours,” said sophomore marketing major Mark Aughinbaugh. “It just stopped between floors.”

Johanna Janovsky, business manager for the GrandMarc, said the problems with the elevators were the result of maintenance work.

Janovsky said new motors were installed in the elevators because the old motors were too loud.

While switching the motors out, some of the elevators went down for long periods of time, she said.

Janovsky said it also took a while for the GrandMarc to establish a connection to TCU’s network, and as a result, students who moved in before Aug. 18, the standard move in date, were without Internet.

The Internet was also out during Labor Day weekend due to a power outage caused by a storm, a problem Janovsky said has been corrected by the implementation of battery backups.

Sophomore business major Peter Volkmer, who lives in the GrandMarc, said the complex seems as if it was quickly thrown together in order to open in time for the fall semester.

“It seems like the way they put this place together is kind of rag-tag,” Volkmer said. “When we came in here nothing was clean, fixtures were hung crooked. It looks like the ceiling is about to fall on us, and they’ve been constantly working on the elevators.”

Janovsky said extra effort was made to complete the physical residences in the complex so students could move in on time for school.

“We did everything we could to try and accommodate the students for the time frame they wanted,” she said. “Some of the amenity areas though were still kind of a work-in-progress when students moved in.”

Volkmer said he felt it was unfair residents were paying for promised amenities, such as the pool and the game room, that were not complete.

Both Volkmer and Aughinbaugh said the maintenance crew seems unresponsive.

“In the stairwell, there were five puddles of throw-up that they left there festering for weeks,” Aughinbaugh said. “I couldn’t even use those stairs for a while, it smelled so bad.”

Resident services manager Marcus Martin said he knew about incidents of throw-up in the stairs but was unaware of it ever going uncleaned for weeks.

“General policy is that when a maintenance item is brought to our attention we try to address it within 24 hours,” Martin said.