City notifies owners LR complex closing
Cites fire, life-safety code violations
The city of Little Rock notified the owner of an apartment complex on Monday that the property will close next week because the majority of its buildings don’t meet fire and life-safety codes.
Inspections by Little Rock fire officials and code enforcement officers found “numerous violations” at Alexander Apartments at 6310 Colonel Glenn Road, causing “a dire concern for the life safety of the occupants,” according to court records.
Tenants have until 5 p.m. Dec. 28 to vacate the property, at which time all utilities will be disconnected, the city said.
“Occupants in residential rental units have the right to safe living spaces that meet code requirements,” City Manager Bruce Moore said in a news release. “If those standards are not met, it is up to the city to step in and take immediate action.”
Fire officials and officers with the city’s Housing and Neighborhood Programs Department inspected the property’s 17 buildings on Dec. 16, the release said.
“Exposed wiring, evidence of raw sewage, absent and non-working smoke alarms, appearance of mold, carcass of a cat, water settling on the roof, plumbing and mechanical issues were all discovered during this inspection,” Little Rock Fire Chief Gregory Summers wrote in his notice of closure.
There are about 100 units at the complex — not all occupied — and city staff will assist occupants with relocation, the news release said.
The complex will not reopen until its buildings comply with state building and fire codes, according to the news release.
The apartment complex’s attorney filed court documents Monday afternoon in Pulaski County Circuit Court requesting a temporary restraining order to stop the closure until a hearing is held.
According to the motion for temporary restraining order, the complex was purchased in March 2014 by Alexander Apartments and “less than a third of the units at the complex were occupied, and all of the units were in a state of disrepair.”
In June 2014, the property was issued several citations by the city, the motion states. Alexander Apartments pleaded no contest to the citations and has continuously appeared before the Little Rock District Court “to report updated information regarding its ongoing remediation efforts, which have cost over a million dollars to date.”
“As of July 30, 2015, there were no life-safety or non-life-safety violations in any occupied unit in the complex,” according to the motion. The complex has continued renovating unoccupied units before renting them.
The motion alleges that during a Dec. 17 hearing in district court, city officials “for the first time raised several additional allegations concerning life-safety [and] non-life safety violations in unoccupied units as well as new allegations concerning violations of the fire protection code.”
But the complex has received no notice of the issues that the city and fire department believe warrant closing the complex, according to the motion.
“The city’s actions will cause irreparable harm to Alexander Apartments’ tenants, who are being forced to vacate their homes over Christmas,” the motion states.
“Once Alexander Apartments’ tenants are forced to move, there will be no opportunity for Alexander Apartments to regain these tenants. If Alexander Apartments’ tenants move out, it will lose revenue [of] $45,000 per month.”