The South Bend skyscraper that can’t seem to catch a break—suffered a break today.

The 25 story Chase Tower lost its elevator service due to a broken water line.

It’s the kind of thing that could have happened at any aging office building downtown, but it happened at the Chase Tower where foreclosure proceedings have dragged on for a year now, and where some tenants are getting touchy.

“I have employees that are not here today because they could not get up the stairs, some of them have some health issues and rightfully so, we said, ‘no don’t try and come up,’” said Brent Sheppard from the Xanatek office on the 19th floor.

By mid morning, three of Xanatek’s 16 employees were missing in action. One had to climb 19 floors worth of stairs to get to his cubicle.

“As of Friday, we had one elevator out of four working,” said Sheppard. “Today we have absolutely no elevators working. It is becoming unbearable from our aspect and from our standpoint.”

When asked why he didn’t move his business elsewhere, Sheppard replied, “Well, we are in a five year lease and we’re only two years into that.”

Today’s trouble began when a two inch water pipe suffered a break in a seventh floor restroom.

An estimated 10,000 gallons of water spilled down the elevator shaft to the floors below.

The elevator carpets were wet to the touch and some of the carpets in elevator waiting areas on several floors were saturated.

It was one more straw on the camel’s back for tenants who continue to do business at the Chase Tower—yet find that they are getting less and less business done.

“I’m not really thrilled about my stair-master situation that I had to do,” said Andrew Nemeth, after climbing the stairs to his office on the 21st floor. “It gets in the way of commerce, it gets in the way of your day to day operations and at some point you’ve got to pull the plug.”

For a brief time on Thursday morning Chase Tower patrons had no choice but to use the stairs. However, for much of the day, there were other options.

Over the noon hour, diners on their way to the Summit Club on the 25th floor were allowed to ride the freight elevator.