LR hotel’s fire alarms cause distress, resident’s suit says
The Little Rock Fire Department responded to more than 500 alarms set off in the Albert Pike Hotel in downtown Little Rock since 2015, and more than 50 percent of those calls were because of unintentional smoke detector activation.
Several times a week the alarms send the city’s fire engines blazing down Scott Street to the historic 10-story high rise. It happens at such a rate that neighboring downtown denizens have begun to tune out the sirens.
But that’s not the case for Kevin Ellison, a former resident of the hotel who recently filed a federal lawsuit against the property owners for “psychological and emotional damage that the false fire alarms are causing the elderly and the handicapped.”
The alarms can go off at any hour, said Ellison, 51, who suffers from anxiety and is considered disabled under the Fair Housing Act.
“When the alarm goes off nobody even leaves the apartment,” said Ellison, who is representing himself in the lawsuit. “Everybody knows it’s just people burning food or burning stuff they ain’t supposed to be.”
But according to an Albert Pike building manager who declined to identify herself, lease agreements only prohibit cigarette smoking indoors, and burning food does not qualify as a lease violation.
That hasn’t prevented Ellison from filing the lawsuit, in which he seeks $75,000 in punitive and compensatory damages and the court-ordered termination of one employee.
The Little Rock Fire Department has recorded 529 alarms at the Albert Pike Hotel since 2015. More than half of those alarms were recorded as “unintentional.” The city’s treasury department has fined the property owner — Montgomery, Ala.based Summit Albert Pike LP — $12,075 for false-alarm calls.
Per the city’s false-alarm ordinance, multifamily residences can be fined if emergency responders are dispatched to more than three false alarms in one year. Property owners are fined $25 for the fourth false-alarm call, $50 for the fifth and $500 for six or more.
“The main focus of the false alarm program is not to generate revenue but rather reduce the number of false alarms at any one location so our officers can respond to other emergency calls,” said Scott Massanelli, the city’s treasury manager, who issues false-alarm penalties for the city.
The Albert Pike Hotel is a 130-unit residence that leases rent-subsidized apartments primarily to the elderly.
Other similarly sized multifamily residences the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette examined showed far fewer false alarm calls. The Residence at Riverdale, for instance, recorded one false fire alarm in 2016, and the public housing project Jessie Powell Towers recorded 26 since 2015 and paid $5,875 in penalties.
Neither Summit Albert Pike LP nor the residence’s management group, LEDIC Management Group, returned
multiple requests for comment. Summit Albert Pike’s attorney, Steve Joiner of the Rose Law Firm, said the company had not yet received a subpoena regarding the federal lawsuit.
It’s not the first time Ellison has filed suit against Summit Albert Pike LP. In November, he filed a similar suit that sought $100,000 in damages and court-ordered termination of two LEDIC employees. However, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Kearney dismissed that case in December after Ellison failed to file a motion response within the required time.
Defendants in that suit claimed Ellison “has identified no basis (state or federal) for his purported cause of action,” and neither identified a “Section 8 program provision that the Defendants have allegedly violated,” according to a court filing.
Earlier this month Ellison moved out of his one-bedroom apartment citing roach and spider infestations. Previously, he had been paying $210 towards his $850 apartment using assistance through a Section 8 housing voucher.
The Albert Pike Hotel is a project-based Section 8 residence, meaning the property owners have a contract with Housing and Urban Development to provide reduced rent to low-income people in exchange for federal subsidies. Residents pay 30 percent of their income toward the rent while HUD pays the rest.
According to a Housing and Urban Development spokesman, HUD also has received a complaint about fire alarms at the complex and “will be contacting both the management and the fire department to assess the situation.”
Originally constructed in 1929 during the Great Depression, the Albert Pike Hotel was listed on the national register of historic places in the late 1970s for contributing “to the remembrance of an era in which the Albert Pike Hotel was a center for affluence,” according to federal registry documents.
“The Albert Pike Hotel reflects ‘the affluent decade,’ in the 1920’s, in its elaborateness and richness of design,” and “is Little Rock’s only remaining major example of the Italian-Spanish Revival style of architecture.”
In 1971 the hotel was purchased by Second Baptist Church of Little Rock for $740,000 and was made into a residence hotel. The building’s current owners purchased the property in 2013 and invested $6 million in renovations using federal tax credits.