Motel owner complying with order
The owner of the Park Avenue motel the city closed in April said the court order filed Tuesday that authorizes him to reopen imposes severe restrictions on his business.
Dinesh Varma said about five people are currently staying at the Parkway Courts Apartments. Tuesday’s order requires occupants and their guests staying for more than six hours to provide two forms of identification and vehicle registration information. The motel has to copy the information and provide it to the police within 15 minutes of receiving it.
Varma said the city’s selective enforcement of its nuisance abatement program shut down the motel in April. The city boarded up the motel after Division 3 Circuit Judge Lynn Williams granted its request for a temporary injunction April 14.
The complaint cited six arrests made at the
815 Park Ave. address from June 2015 to last March. State law allows cities to seek the forced eviction of occupants and the removal of structures at properties “used to facilitate the commission of a continuing series of three or more criminal violations.”
Varma said the city has “targeted” his business despite other properties generating more police calls. An injunction granted in August 2014 cited 86 calls for police service at the motel from August 2013 to August 2014. The subsequent September 2014 court order conditioned the reopening of the property on numerous terms, including limiting check-in times to between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.
Varma said the city gave no indication it was seeking to close the motel again until it boarded up the property April 18 and evicted its more than 20 residents.
“I’m tired of this harassment,” he said. “I’m going to sell it. I’ve asked (the city) to buy it, but they don’t want to.”
Hot Springs Police Chief Jason Stachey said calls for police service at Parkway Courts have been frequent relative to other motels.
“I can tell you there is a great disparity between the number of calls we have responded to at 815 Park Ave. in comparison to other motels in Hot Springs,” he said. “There’s a significant disparity. There’s been an inordinate, heavy volume.”
Deputy City Attorney Terry Askew said Varma satisfied the terms of the agreement he and the city reached in July, weeks before Division 1 Circuit Judge John Homer Wright signed Tuesday’s order. She said the agreement was reached after a July 6 hearing, but Varma’s attorney, Josh Hurst, needed time to approve it before the order could be filed.
“It’s my understanding he’s done everything we’ve asked him to do,” Askew said. “Several different authorities had to inspect the building itself and the parking lot before it could reopen.”
Stachey also said that the motel is complying.
“Speaking with our nuisance abatement officer (Thursday morning), he has informed me Mr. Varma is beginning to comply with that order,” he said.
Tuesday’s order incorporated the requirements of the agreement Varma reached with the city in 2014. Askew said the terms of the order are standard for nuisance abatement cases, including the provision that shields the city from liability for damages a property may incur during an abatement process that typically includes boarding up the windows.
The city has filed nine nuisance abatement complaints against other properties since 2014 for activity ranging from drug trafficking to a shootout at 233 Cooper St. that injured two people in April 2014. Most of the subsequent court orders that release the property permanently enjoin the owners or others on the premises from engaging in the activity that led to the complaint. They also permanently prohibit the people responsible for the activity from being on the premises and require the property to be inspected by the city before it can be reoccupied.
Varma said he reopened last month and has paid the $1,500 in attorney fees, fines and other costs stipulated in the order. He was required to allow the city’s neighborhood services division, chief building inspector and fire department to inspect and approve the property before it could reopen. The order imposes quarterly inspections through next August to verify that the motel is “safe and sanitary.”
According to court records, Varma pleaded no contest in June 2015 to 32 of the more than 50 code violations the city brought against the property in February 2015. He was fined $375, with the city withdrawing the balance of the violations after Varma was deemed to have complied with all but one of the charges.