Mitsubishi Shuttle Elevator @ Crowne Plaza Dubai*****, Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE

- Note: Management of this building was transferred to Millennium & Copthorne Hotels in 2023, resulting in it getting rebranded as Millennium Plaza Downtown Dubai. However, as the Crowne Plaza brand was still in use when this was filmed, the old name will be used to refer to videos from this location taken in 2022.
This hotel and serviced apartments building was built as part of Holiday Centre, an old mixed-use development located across Sheikh Zayed Road from the plot where Museum of the Future has been built recently, consisting of one 24-floor hotel and serviced apartments tower and one 23-floor office tower, linked by a three-level podium and a single common basement at the base. It was the very first large-scale development to take place in the area, and with a combined floor area of 90,000 square meters, it also was the largest single development in Dubai at the time it was built. It precipitated the onset of the surrounding area's high-rise development, resulting in the neighborhood getting transformed into a dense jungle of skyscrapers that we see now during the next two decades.
The hotel and apartment building opened under the name "Holiday Inn-Crowne Plaza," the former name of Crowne Plaza hotel chain when it debuted as the upscale sister brand of Holiday Inn Hotels, and was considered the flagship property of the Holiday Inn hotel chain in the Middle East before its integration with the InterContinental chain of hotels and subsequent renaming into simply "Crowne Plaza." (Indeed, the entire complex's name actually comes from the hotel's older branding, and serves as the remainder of its origins.) It had an L-shaped footprint, with a shorter 19-floor wing perpendicular to Sheikh Zayed Road and a taller 24-floor wing parallel to the said highway. The shorter wing housed 405 hotel rooms, and the taller wing had 227 serviced apartments, and were connected internally on all of 2nd through 18th floors. Its first two floors had a shopping mall that also spanned the base of the office tower next door, with separate entrance foyers for the hotel and serviced apartments sections on the street level. The actual hotel lobby was found on the second floor. Most of the hotel's F&B outlets could be found here, consisting of the lobby lounge called Cappuccino's, an all-day buffet restaurant called Al Dana, an Italian restaurant named Al Fresco, and a British sports pub named Harvester's. The main ballroom and several banquet rooms were also on this floor. The third floor, which was the podium roof, had more function rooms and the hotel's executive offices, as well as a health club and an outdoor pool deck. The fourth floor had two more restaurants, consisting of Al Tannour, a Lebanese restaurant, and Sakura, a Japanese restaurant. Rooms and apartments were located on floors 5 and above, occupying their respective wings. An executive floor lounge was also located on the 17th floor of the hotel wing. The basement had BOH areas and the loading dock, as well as some parking for the office tower next door. Most of the parking was provided on a covered lot behind the buildings.
The building was quite unusual in that it was probably the only place (alongside the office tower next door) to feature Mitsubishi's pre-GPS-series elevators serving more than 10 floors, which are very difficult to find in Dubai outside of the old city center of Deira, as development of high-rise buildings in those areas only began in earnest from the late 1990s. This particular elevator which connected the street foyer with the reception two floors above, however, was not a high-rise installation but a roped hydraulic variant of the Elepet Advance V model; as hydraulic elevators of this generation had not yet adopted inverters, it still used AC two-speed control. Due to this the ride was quite uncomfortable, but at least the leveling phase was shorter and more efficient compared to similar products by other manufacturers. It had black round buttons and modified 8-segment displays to accommodate the letter "G" for the ground floor, while the hall stations had square buttons with illuminating edges used since the 1980s. There were two sets of doors, with doors on opposite sides opening on each landing, though for some reason the indicator above the rear door had been turned off. The cab was quite narrow, just being enough to fit one wheelchair or stroller, and had a very simple interior of stainless steel walls with etched patterns and linoleum flooring that did not seem appropriate for a once-flagship property of a major hotel brand. Signs of age were evident everywhere, from buttons that did not light up when pressed to the top segment of the floor indicator did not work, but at least the vintage "dinner-bell" chime still rang loud and clear as if it was new.
Manufacturer: ETA-MELCO Elevator Co. L.L.C.
Model name: HVA
Year of commission: 1993
Loading: 750kg (1,650lbs)
Capacity: 10 persons
Full speed: 0.75m/s (150FPM)
Serviced floors: *G, 2