City orders Arkansas' largest hotel to make repairs or be shut down

The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn PUT ON NOTICE: The city has notified the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa that it will close the downtown landmark if the new owner doesn't address ongoing maintenance issues.
The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn PUT ON NOTICE: The city has notified the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa that it will close the downtown landmark if the new owner doesn't address ongoing maintenance issues.

The city of Hot Springs has ordered Arkansas’ largest hotel to make repairs to the recently purchased property or it could shut down this fall, according to the Sentinel-Record.

The newspaper reported, citing a letter from chief building official Mike Scott to Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa General Manger Bob Martorana, that the hotel would be forced to close by Nov. 8 if it was not found in compliance.

Forty-seven rooms with identified safety violations have been ordered unusable until issues are corrected, the letter states. The hotel has 478 rooms.

Among the violations listed during an Aug. 8 inspection were faulty ground-fault-circuit interrupters that protect against electrical shock, and the use of extension cords.

Hotel management was also informed that it has less than a month to correct fire code violations, including more than 20 egress and fire doors that don’t fit their frames properly.

“The Arlington is almost 100 years old, and it’s at a point now where the level of maintenance that is going on isn’t keeping up with the deterioration,” Fire Chief Ed Davis told the Sentinel-Record.

Also of concern is the building’s exterior, which reportedly has cracked plaster that could cause water to get behind and freeze as temperatures drop later this year. That, in turn, could cause portions of the exterior to come loose.

The Arlington was purchased in July by Sky Capital Group LP of Little Rock in a private deal with Southwest Hotels Inc., who had owned and operated the hotel since 1954.

Read the full story in the Sentinel-Record here and read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

Information for this article was contributed by David Showers of the Sentinel-Record.

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