Rising demand for home elevators

Ray and Eve Pech inside their Sevaria home elevator, which was recently installed as part of a larger renovation project.
Debra A. Aleksinas
Ray and Eve Pech inside their Sevaria home elevator, which was recently installed as part of a larger renovation project.
Ray and Eve Pech were in their late 30’s when they built their dream house 40 years ago on the side of a mountain overlooking Ski Sundown.
The modest, 2,000-square-foot, vertically-designed home offered privacy, ample space for their young family, stunning scenery — and stairs galore.
“It’s on three levels because it’s on the side of a hill,” said Ray Pech, a retired lawyer who serves on the Northwestern Connecticut Transit District board of directors. “We fell in love with the tremendous views.”
As for the stairs, he said, “We really didn’t think a lot about it. The thought never occurred to us that the day would come when we wouldn’t be able to go up stairs forever.”
The Pechs are among the growing number of Baby Boomers who aren’t planning to sell because they like their homes and have decided to age in place.
During a 2020 expansion project, they retrofitted their home with an elevator so that in their Golden Years they could safely enjoy all levels of their home, and also make it easier for visiting friends with mobility problems and wheelchair bound relatives to visit without climbing stairs.
“We thought, 'how do we make this house so that we can stay here?' and that was the logical choice, even though we didn’t need it physically yet,” Pech explained. “But I guess it’s there when we need it.”
Elevators are no longer just a luxury. Connecticut is home to 823,529 people aged 60 or older, representing 23% of the state’s population, according to a Healthy Aging Data Report. For many seniors, assisted living is out of reach due to rising costs and health concerns, particularly post-pandemic. Caregiving, too, can be costly for those on limited incomes.
A challenging housing market is discouraging senior homeowners from selling their homes, so many aging Baby Boomers are choosing to stay put. But with age comes the inevitable potential for decline in mobility. Home elevators, and to a lesser degree, stair lifts, are solutions to this growing problem, according to industry experts.
Elevator Service Company, Inc., (ESCO) based in Torrington, currently has licenses to install lifts and elevators in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, and installs more than 100 residential elevators annually, according to company officials.
“For the Northwest Connecticut area, towns that are most abundant in our installations would be closer to the New York border, as the square footage of private homes are larger and more frequented to owners who live there year around,” said Managing Director Mat Montgomery.
Over the past five years, Montgomery said he has noticed a change in the attitude that elevators are reserved for the wealthy. “Today, the elevator is a mainstay in the design of the home as building outward for most is challenging with limits in land.”
And while the market continues to grow, he said, the manufacturing for the type of equipment offered by ESCO is growing, too, “bringing down costs which allow us to put these units in every type of home, regardless of wealth.”
The cost to install a residential elevator varies according to layout of the home, the number of levels served and the elevator style, said the ESCO official.
“Our customers all have different needs and wants for their elevator, so the price range will vary with equipment and product offerings.” Generally speaking, he said, a two-story home prepped for an elevator shaft requiring two closets stacked on top of each other, “will spend about $45,000 on a new elevator for this shaftway. This is much cheaper than the price of some newer cars, making an elevator a low barrier to entry to having the to move around your home freely and safely for decades.”
That estimate does not include construction costs to house the unit.
Ray Pech said when he and his wife crunched the numbers, their elevator cost them the equivalent of about three years of rent in a “reasonably nice” senior living complex.
“For us it made sense financially” to stay put, said Pech. “We built the house and decided to redesign the house again in 2020, and the elevator was the instigation of it.” They enlarged their living and dining areas to make up for lost space on the third level where the elevator shaft took up one of the bedrooms.
For the Pechs, the idea was to make the elevator look as if it had always been in the house. It appears as an ordinary door off the living room. Ray Pech opened the door, then slid aside a safety gate leading to a well-lit, wood-paneled box elevator with a weight capacity of 1,000 lbs. and ample space for a wheelchair and another adult.
Once inside, he secured the gate, and with a push of a button, the elevator, which operates via a pulley chain, smoothly and quietly ascended to the upper level at a barely noticeable speed of 40 feet per minute.
Beyond function, elevators can also be aesthetically attractive in a home.
“We do need to hang some art in there,” Eve Pech said to her husband as the elevator door opened on its return to the main level.
The case of Jacquier vs. Camardi is expected to continue at Torrington Superior Court the week of Sept. 15.
NORTH CANAAN — A pair of Democratic Town Committee (DTC) candidates are seeking legal recourse to ensure they are included on the ballot this November despite errors on the party endorsement slate.
Plaintiffs Jean Jacquier and Carol Overby brought the case against defendant Marilisa Camardi to Torrington Superior Court, which held an evidentiary hearing Friday, Sept. 12. Testimony from both sides aimed to explain the situation to Judge Ann E. Lynch.
At the July 22 DTC caucus, Jacquier was endorsed as the party’s candidate for town clerk and Overby was endorsed to run for Board of Finance.
The next day, DTC chair and caucus secretary Chris Jacques filed the full endorsement slate and State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) documents to Assistant Town Clerk Marilisa Camardi. But the slate was missing information: Jacquier and Overby were not assigned to a specific office or term.
"I am a rookie at this," Jacques said on the witness stand. "I suppose I just didn't look at it closely enough."
Jacquier testified that she was not wearing her glasses while filling out her information on the official endorsement slate and “made a clerical mistake.”
Overby was not called as a witness.
Camardi testified to noticing on July 24 that the form was missing information and, after cross referencing the accompanying SEEC documents, filled in the blanks herself. It was established during the hearing that making clerical corrections on forms is within proper protocol for a town clerk.
On Aug. 7, however, First Selectman Brian Ohler alerted the Secretary of the State’s (SOTS) office that the original document was incomplete. (Ohler was not present at the Sept. 12 hearing.)
SOTS Election Officer Heather Augeri reviewed the slate as it was originally submitted. Per the filing, she responded that the endorsements were not properly certified and therefore void. Augeri advised Camardi remove both nominees from the ballot.
Jacquier testified that since the Aug. 7 correspondence she has had several phone calls with Augeri, who she described as a friend. Jacquier said Augeri relayed the same message to her: “She said it’s not valid.”
Camardi is the acting town clerk in North Canaan, though she is technically Jacquier’s part-time assistant. Jacquier is the current, four-term elected town clerk but has not reported to work since February following a dispute between her and the first selectman. “I did not resign. I did not quit. I just left,” Jacquier testified. “I couldn’t stand the turmoil.”
Plaintiff attorney John Kennelly said the SOTS office has no statutory authority to rule on issues relating to municipal party endorsements. Kennelly claimed that as the acting town clerk, Camardi is the sole individual responsible for finalizing and certifying the town election ballot.
Kennelly asserted that if Camardi was informed through the SEEC documents of which offices Jacquier and Overby were endorsed for, then Augeri’s advice should be ignored and the two candidates should be eligible to run in November.
Camardi said she was waiting to finalize the ballot until the court makes its decision.
After nearly three hours of testimony, Judge Lynch referenced a similar case, Airey vs. Feliciano (2024), in which Connecticut Supreme Court ruled to reject an improperly signed petition sheet. Lynch requested briefs from each attorney by Monday, Sept. 15, and planned to continue the hearing that week.
Aradev LLC’s plans to redevelop Wake Robin Inn include four 2,000-square-foot cabins, an event space, a sit-down restaurant and fast-casual counter, a spa, library, lounge, gym and seasonal pool. If approved, guest room numbers would increase from 38 to 57.
LAKEVILLE — The public hearing for the redevelopment of Wake Robin Inn is over. Salisbury Planning and Zoning Commission now has two months to make a decision.
The hearing closed on Tuesday, Sept. 9, after its seventh session.
Michael Klemens, chair of P&Z, had warned at the opening of the proceedings that “this might be a long night” due to a last-minute influx of material from experts hired by Wells Hill Road residents William and Angela Cruger to oppose the project, but this turned out not to be the case.
These 11th hour submissions set a sour tone to the start of the meeting, with commissioner Robert Riva stating that it was “not very professional to pull this stunt on this Commission.” Riva said he had diligently reviewed the already substantial documentation provided by both the applicant and the opposing experts, and was surprised to find a “dump” of additional information submitted just hours before the meeting’s start time at 6 p.m.
Tensions were quickly eased, however, when William Cruger offered his concise summation of his platform’s opposition to the expansion, which is the second iteration of the project after an earlier version was withdrawn late last year.
“It’s important for you all to hear from me that there was never any disrespect intended to the Commission, the commissioners, and to the process,” Cruger said. He defended the last-minute submissions as an effort on the part of the experts to be thorough in their analysis: “Our intention… has been and remains to do our best to get whatever we think will be helpful in your deliberations into the record.”
The Crugers formally entered the hearing process as intervenors for the first application from Aradev LLC, the applicant, in the fall of 2024, meaning they and their hired consultants had full party status in the hearing proceedings. During this cycle, however, they chose not to petition for intervenor status, yet during this round of hearings their role has been similar. Klemens described them as having “almost intervenor status — not quite.”
William Cruger summarized the consultant’s findings for Aradev’s revised application, noting they found it to be “virtually identical in scale to the previous proposal.”
“Our position is that the proposed expansion would absolutely negatively impact the usefulness, enjoyment and value of the surrounding properties,” he said.
Aradev’s attorney Joshua Mackey countered by saying that the special permit conditions would elevate the currently non-conforming hotel in the zone, describing it as a “community asset that is improved, regulated, and safeguarded for generations to come.” He characterized Aradev as “the next steward of this storied property.”
After Mackey and Aradev co-founder Steven Cohen concluded their remarks, Klemens closed the hearing with no public comment, which he had stated would be the case at last week’s hearing session on Thursday, Sept. 4. Klemens said that P&Z will begin deliberating the proposal in early October after the commissioners have had the chance to review the information in the record.
A total of 45 letters, including the Crugers’ experts’ testimony, were submitted since the Sept. 4 meeting alone, alongside hundreds of pages of application materials and additional testimony.
As the Commission deliberates and reviews, all of this information is available for public viewing on the “Meeting Documents” subpage under P&Z’s section on the town website, www.salisburyct.us.
The Commission must issue a decision on the application by Nov. 13, the end of the statutorily defined deliberation window.
COPAKE — Judith Marie “Judy” Drury, 76, a four-year resident of Copake, New York, formerly of Millerton, New York, died peacefully on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, at Vassar Bros. Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, surrounded by her loving family and her Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Judy worked as a therapy aide for Taconic DDSO in Wassaic, New York, prior to her retirement on Feb. 1, 2004. She then went on to work in the Housekeeping Department at Vassar Bros. Medical Center for several years.
Born Jan. 2, 1949, in Richford, Vermont, she was the daughter of the late Leo J. and Marie A. (Bean) Martel. She attended Roeliff Jansen Central School in Columbia County, New York, in her early years. Judy was an avid sports fan and she was particularly fond of the New England Patriots football team and the New York Rangers hockey team. She enjoyed spending time with her family and traveling to Florida, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania for many years. She was a longtime parishioner of Faith Bible Chapel of Shekomeko on Silver Mountain in Millerton as well.
Judy is survived by two brothers; John Martel and his wife, Jane of Falls Village, Connecticut, and Frank Martel of Ancram, New York; her sister, Susanna “Sue” Martel of Copake, New York; and three generation of nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews and great-great nieces and nephews. In addition to her parents, Judy was predeceased by her brother, Leo W. Martel, Sr. of Poughkeepsie, New York, and her sister, Helen J. Slater of Hillsdale, New York; her sister-in-law, Karen Martel of Ancram and a special nephew, Jacob Stickle of Copake.
A visiting hour will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Faith Bible Chapel, 222 Silver Mountain Road, Millerton, New York 12546. A funeral service will be held at 3 p.m. Pastor William Mayhew will officiate. Burial will follow at Irondale Cemetery in Millerton, New York. A celebration of Judy’s life will be announced at a later date. Arrangements have been entrusted to the Scott D. Conklin Funeral Home, 37 Park Avenue, Millerton, New York 12546.
Memorial contributions may be made to Faith Bible Chapel, 222 Silver Mountain Road, Millerton, New York 12546 or American Cancer Society, 45 Reade Place, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601. To send an online condolence to the family, flowers to the service or to plant a tree in Judy’s memory, please visit www.conklinfuneralhome.com
AMESVILLE — Jeremy Dakin, 78, passed away Aug. 31, 2025, at Vassar Brothers Medical Center after a long battle with COPD and other ailments.
Jeremy was a dear friend to many, and a fixture of the Amesville community. There will be a service in his memory at Trinity Lime Rock Episcopal Church on Sept. 27 at 11 a.m.
Below is the obituary Jeremy himself wrote:
Born July 20, 1947, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
A resident of Salisbury, Connecticut for over 75 years, he graduated from UVM in 1970, at which time he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a German translator (“It just seemed like a better idea than learning Vietnamese”), and served two years in West Berlin.
Returning to Vermont in 1973 he began a 16-year gig as a ski shop manager and a professional ski patroller, which led to a 30-year stint as an EMT.
A direct descendant of Rebecca Nurse (who was hanged as a witch in Salem in 1692), he is survived by a nephew, Robin Dakin, of Englewood, Ohio, his wife Amy, and a flock of grandnieces, all of whom seem to have inherited the family love of camping and canoeing.
The love of his life, Wren Smith, passed away in 2007 after a 10-year battle with breast cancer. By the time he was seventy, Jeremy’s physical activities were curtailed by COPD, due to a lifetime of smoking.
Rather than spend money on flowers, please consider a donation to the American Cancer Society and/or the American Lung Association. But, for Pete’s sake, don’t smoke.