LITTLE ROCK — A fire early Tuesday morning in the kitchen of the Peabody Little Rock hotel spread through two floors of the hotel and did $1 million in damage, Fire Department officials said.
Fire crews rushed to the hotel at 200 W. Markham St. about 8 a.m. for a blaze that started in a broiler, officials said.
The fire went up through the kitchen’s ventilation hood on the back side of the building and quickly spread upwards, igniting two floors and even melting parts of the roof, Fire Department spokesman Capt. Jason Weaver said.
No one was injured in the fire, he said.
It took a while for crews to rip between the floors and knock out hot spots, Weaver said, and with the damage to the floors, electrical and plumbing lines, as well as the appliances, the damageresulting from the fire will total about $1 million.
“The damage wasn’t horrible,” Weaver said. “There’s just so much equipment, it’ll cost to get in between the walls ... and the kitchen equipment.”
Bruce Skidmore, director of sales and marketing for the hotel, said that all guests and employees evacuated the hotel when the alarms went off.
By 10:30 a.m., everyone was back inside. The fire did not spread to any of the guest rooms, Weaver said, though there was a “slight haze” of smoke in some of the occupied areas.
Skidmore said the hotel’s traditional Christmas brunch, held at the Capriccio Grill, was canceled. The brunch was sold out, he said, and affected more than 250 customers.
Room service was suspended, Skidmore said, but he said staff members werefiguring out a way to restore food service and were opening up the hotel’s banquet kitchen.
The lease of the Peabody Little Rock is in the process of being sold to Fairwood Capital LLC of Memphis, which plans on converting it into a Marriott by early 2013.
According to earlier reports, Fairwood Capital, a private investment company, plans on pumping $16 million into renovations and improvements to the 414-room and 22-suite hotel. The company had hoped to have the lease signed by the middle of January.
The city of Little Rock owns the hotel property and the attached Statehouse Convention Center. The Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau operates the convention center.
It could not be determined Tuesday whether the fire would affect the lease of the hotel. Calls to the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau were not returned.
The Peabody took over a lease from the Excelsior hotel, which opened in 1982. The Peabody opened in 2002 after spending $40 million in renovations.
There are three Peabody hotels - the flagship facility in Memphis, one in Orlando, Fla., and the one in Little Rock. All three feature the tradition of mallard ducks marching each morning through the lobby, where they swim in a fountain before marching back through the lobby at the end of the day.
Information for this article was contributed by Claudia Lauer of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/26/2012