Irvington, NJ Building Safety: Elevator Maintenance (2026)

Article IV of Chapter 355, added in 1987 by Ord. No. MC 2835, is a single, tightly-written section aimed at one recurring landlord failure: elevators left broken for weeks. Section 355-29 requires all apartment buildings with elevators to have twenty-four-hour maintenance contracts to prevent elevators from being out of service for any excessive length of time, and separately requires every elevator to be maintained to safely sustain the loads to which they are subject, to operate properly and to be free of physical and fire hazards.

The section does not set its own fine schedule; instead it cross-references Chapter 1, Article III, Penalties, meaning a violation defaults to § 1-17's general Township penalty: a fine up to $2,000, up to 90 days in jail, up to 90 days of community service, or a combination. What makes § 355-29 unusual is its own multiplier: each twenty-four-hour period that an elevator remains out of service constitutes a separate offense, so a landlord who lets an elevator sit dead for a week is exposed to seven separate chargeable offenses rather than one continuing violation, each carrying its own fine up to the $2,000 statutory maximum.

The requirement applies to all apartment buildings with elevators, with no unit-count threshold or exemption written into the text, so it reaches small multi-unit buildings as well as large complexes.