lifting those payloads up the tower would just use the commerical power grid and not batteries that you also have to carry up. cables and motors are much more efficient than propellers.

Reminds me of the pneumatic tubes used in hospitals to send labs between units. You can tour the pneumatic tube system at Stanford- it's several miles long. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pneumatic-tubes-at-stanf...

An elevator?

An elevator indeed. But there's a cost involved in elevating goods to the top of a tall building. My question was, is that cost smaller than the cost of having drones with elevation capabilities take of from the ground?

Presumably the predominant portion of the energy used to raise an elevator is for the mass of the elevator itself

Usually elevators are counterweighted fairly significantly.

As you say it is actually using very little energy in overcoming the inertia of the system to go up as the counterweight outweighs an empty elevator, and the weight of a drone is insignificant in this regard. However when coming back down the system must raise the heavy counterweight which is only partially balanced by the empty elevator.