2x Mitsubishi Valley Wing Main Elevators @ Shangri-La Singapore*****, Tanglin, Singapore

The 131-room Valley Wing of this hotel opened in 1985 as its executive annex, with the primary intent of catering to VIP guests such as heads of state, international dignitaries, and celebrities. (Indeed, it is safe to assume that big-name guests on the news who are staying in this hotel are almost surely housed in the Valley Wing.) To that end, this building essentially functioned as a separate hotel-within-a-hotel, with its own driveway and reception, and could easily be cut off from the rest of the hotel compound when desired. Needless to say, the building was also home to the Shangri-La Suite, which was the largest accommodation of the hotel and basically its equivalent of the presidential suite.

The building had 17 floors and one basement. Its dedicated entrance was on the ground level, accessed via Anderson Road to the east of the hotel grounds, and led to a three-level lobby decorated with white marble columns, ornate but rather old-fashioned chandeliers, and a wall painting depicting the mystical village of Shangri-La, of which the hotel was named after. Being the last of the three accommodation structures to be built also meant that the building was the one to have been refurbished the least, especially with the other two buildings having undergone a significant renovation in the recent years; such was evident in this lobby, which more or less retained the original old-school Chinoiserie design also found in 80s and 90s Shangri-La properties (e.g., Kowloon and Island Shangri-La hotels in Hong Kong, Shangri-La Bangkok, and China World Hotel in Beijing, to name a few). Off to the side was the lobby lounge, where all-day champagne, liquors, and refreshments were served for the Valley Wing guests, and an area called the Summit Room which normally served as an exclusive breakfast area and could probably also be used for events and banquets. The second floor in this building was simply a stairs interchange level, and was not served by any of the elevators. Another banquet room was on the third floor, where a bridge led to the Tower Wing lobby; the design of this floor decidedly felt more Western compared to the reception area, having clearly taken a page out of European grand hotels. Level 4 had mechanical rooms and thus bypassed by the passenger elevators. Guest rooms were on levels 5 and above, with the said Shangri-La Suite perched on the top level 17. The basement area had the hotel’s executive offices.

The building had six elevators, consisting of two main guest elevators, one VIP elevator, two service elevators, and one shuttle elevator serving its lower floors. This video features the two main guest elevators, which alongside the other passenger elevators seemed to be the only elements replaced since 1985. Originally DC gearless models by Mitsubishi (most likely GL-TFNL), they were replaced with AC-VVVF installations around the same time as the main guest elevators of the other two buildings. They had custom white plastic buttons that were clearly different from the metallic buttons found in the Tower and Garden Wing elevators. Their cabs had ornately carved wooden interiors, which went well with the building’s classical atmosphere. Apparently the carpets on the cab floors used to have the name of the day embroidered on them in the past (again in a similar way to Kowloon and Island Shangri-La), though such attention to detail seemed to have been phased out. Despite being in the most luxurious wing of the hotel and also around the same age as the other two buildings’ passenger elevators, these already seemed to be showing signs of wear, with the burnt-out LCD display to the left and scratch marks on the doors. Otherwise they ran quite smoothly, with an alright speed considering the small size of the building. All of the guest floors as well as the basement offices were keyed off and required respective passes to select.

Manufacturer: Mitsubishi Elevator (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
Model name: NexWay
Year of commission: 2012
Loading: 1,150kg (2,535lbs)
Capacity: 17 persons
Full speed: 2.5m/s (500FPM)
Serviced floors: B1, *1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17