LR’s Heritage House ordered emptied till it meets codes

Assistant Fire Marshal Ryan Baker walks out of a room at the Heritage House Inn during a code inspection March 1. A Pulaski County circuit judge Thursday ordered the motel to be closed until its owner corrects building and fire-code violations. The move displaced about four dozen people living there.
Assistant Fire Marshal Ryan Baker walks out of a room at the Heritage House Inn during a code inspection March 1. A Pulaski County circuit judge Thursday ordered the motel to be closed until its owner corrects building and fire-code violations. The move displaced about four dozen people living there.

— Nearly four dozen people living at the Heritage House Inn must find new places to live by Monday evening after a Pulaski County circuit judge ordered the motel to be shut down until every room meets city fire and building codes.

On Thursday, Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen ordered the owner of the Heritage House Inn - Gurmeet “George” Nerhan of Huachuca City, Ariz. - to evacuate the motel and not rent any of the 102 rooms until Little Rock’s fire marshal and code enforcement officers certify that the building is up to code. The matter would then go back before the judge.

Approximately 45 people now live at the Heritage House Inn, which drew city scrutiny on Feb. 28 when police found an abandoned 5-year-old girl in a room at the extended-stay motel.

The Little Rock police report, retold in testimony during Thursday’s hearing, described the squalid conditions of the room where the girl was found - including bugs that scattered from a mattress on the floor when an officer turned on the only working light in the bathroom.

On March 6, city attorneys filed two motions in Pulaski County Circuit Court asking the judge to find Nerhan in violation of a series of 2005 circuit court orders directing him and the motel staff to fix various problems identified as code violations. While the city also asked that Griffen hold Nerhan in contempt of the orders, Thursday’s ruling did not address a fine or any repercussions.

“The city’s motion was very clear alleging continued violations of city code since previous court orders,” Griffen said. “No evidence was ever presented that Building One of the motel was ever fully brought into compliance since the orders were issued. The city has met the burden of proof that the motel failed to be in compliance of [previous] orders.”

The city’s requests came after staff members conducted a sweep of the entire motel at 7500 S. University Ave. on March 1.

Two days earlier, Adriyanna Duhon was found alone, lying on the mattress after her mother’s boyfriend, Byron Cornelius, left her there. He was later arrested and charged with child endangerment after he checked into a drug rehabilitation facility.

Officer Mark Williams testified Thursday that the door on the motel room would not lock and that there were beer cans, a small bag of marijuana, a broken crack pipe, condoms on the floor and bed-stand, and an open can of soup and a TV dinner on the bathroom floor.

The room was later boarded up, along with about a dozen other rooms, and condemned on March 1 by city staff members who cited various health and fire-safety violations.

During their inspection, code enforcement officers found more than 40 violations throughout the motel’s three buildings. Photographs of problem areas were shown at the hearing. The problems ranged from 2-foot-wide patches of duct tape over leaks in room ceilings, mold growing around bathtubs and cracked bathroom floors to rotted window frames and missing electrical panels.

Attorney Danny Crabtree, who represented Nerhan, said in his closing argument that the city had failed to show that Nerhan had willfully violated the 2005 orders, which he said were too vague and did not outline specific remedial actions. He argued that the motel’s owners are being punished for acting responsibly when Adriyanna was found.

“They were rewarded with [City Manager] Bruce Moore coming on March 1 and saying I want all of this shut down,” he said. “The reality is Moore went down to Heritage House, and it didn’t look like where he lives, but that isn’t the standard. What we have seen today is not violations of or disregard for the orders ... that is the standard.”

Griffen disagreed with Crabtree, pointing to different sections of the orders that stated that the buildings should not be rented out until the city agreed that the owners had met standards in two of the buildings, as well as a section stating that the motel’s owners could opt not to fix the rooms, but those rooms would then not be rentable.

Assistant City Attorney Alex Betton focused his questions to witnesses Thursday on whether Nerhan knew that many of the rooms being rented were in substandard condition.

The court heard testimony from city code enforcement officials and fire marshals, as well as a state Health Department expert who had responded to two calls about bedbug bites in January and February involving several of the rooms that are now condemned.

Betton pointed out that a worksheet signed by maids on Feb. 27 said all of the smoke detectors were in working condition, but the sweep of rooms on March 1, yielded dozens of citations for nonworking, misplaced and broken smoke detectors.

“This structure has never been brought into compliance, and the defendant admittedly continued to rent rooms in Building One,” he said. “We are asking the court to shut down the facility until not just one or two or three rooms are brought into compliance, but the whole structure ... the fire code and life-safety violations in these buildings are dangerous not just to the residents of single rooms but to the entire complex because of how they would enable fires to spread.”

With the judge’s order, the city will begin helping the 45 residents still living in 37 rooms find temporary housing starting this morning, Moore said. About 70 people were living at the motel four weeks ago, but after the city inspections, the city warned residents that they needed to look for other places to live.

“We don’t normally like to shut down residential facilities or remove people from their residence,” he said. “But this was the safest and healthiest option for those residents, for the city, for the community and for the building itself.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/30/2012

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