On Shabbat Elevators

This week's NY Times real estate section has a reader Q & A on the topic of Shabbat elevators:

Q. Orthodox Jews in my co-op want to make one of our two elevators a Sabbath elevator, which would stop automatically at every floor. We have only 2 elevators for more than 190 apartments on 16 floors. Dedicating one as a Sabbath elevator could cause problems. For one, it could take quite a bit of time just to get in and out of our apartments, particularly from upper floors. Can the co-op do this even if a large number of people oppose it? ... Bob Zolt, Riverdale, the Bronx

A. Arthur I. Weinstein, a Manhattan lawyer and the vice president of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, said that the power to decide whether to have a Sabbath elevator belongs to the board of directors of the co-op corporation.

“New York’s Business Corporation Law provides that the business of a co-op is run by its board of directors,” he said. “And the courts have held that they will give considerable weight to the board’s exercise of its business judgment and will generally not overrule a board without very strong reasons.”

Mr. Weinstein said that while state law also requires a co-op to treat all shareholders equally, it is quite likely that a court would limit that obligation to financial matters and not extend it to building policies or house rules that may benefit one tenant more than another.

“The only real course of action for the questioner is to make his arguments to the other shareholders, let the directors know the concerns about this proposal and, if necessary, at the next election, vote in board members who agree with those concerns.”

This is an interesting question. As opposed to some accommodations that are made to increase the comfort level of observing Shabbat, such as an Eruv - which does not affect the quality of life of anyone who chooses not to utilize it - the question outlines a very different scenario. If, as the letter-writer alleges, there really are such a large number of nonobservant or non-Jewish residents who would be inconvenienced by putting one of only two elevators on a Shabbat schedule for much of the weekend, then it seems to me that it would be a hard sell. And, as the answer to question outlines, this would be an issue that is entirely up to the co-op board. So the assumption is that in order to approve this request, the board must either have a majority of Orthodox members, or those who are sympathetic to giving up their free use of the elevator over the weekend to make observant resident's lives a little easier on Shabbat, though the latter would seem unlikely to exist. My assumption is that in a case such as the questioner outlined, the granting of a Shabat elevator would be a long shot until there is an Orthodox majority on the board, just from a legal perspective.

And I'm not sure why, but for some reason, my knee-jerk response to this request is an uncharacteristically ghetto-jew one. My first reaction to this question was that this is an unfair request for the building's Orthodox residents to make of their non-Orthodox neighbors - to give up one of only two elevators for 16 floors, over the probably very busy weekend period. I mean, when they moved in, they knew that the building didn't have a Shabbat elevator, right? So why should their desire not to have to walk up the stairs on Shabbat come before those of their neighbors' desires not to wait an unfair amount of time for an elevator - at the very least until there is an Orthodox majority in the building?