By Mark Scheer
It appears as though the old Hotel Niagara is headed for condemnation.
City council members learned Monday that a recent inspection of the Rainbow Boulevard property revealed several areas of concern, including the lack of electricity, heat and an operational fire protection system inside the building.
Chief Code Enforcement Officer Dennis Virtuoso stopped short of saying the building would be condemned but said representatives from his office would pay a visit sometime today.
“At this point, the building is not yet condemned,” Mayor Paul Dyster told lawmakers during the council’s Monday afternoon agenda review session. “It’s being processed by code enforcement.”
Lawmakers expressed concern last month about the condition of the building and the financial condition of its owner.
Following the council’s direction, fire inspectors took a tour with the building’s engineer on March 4. Fire Chief William MacKay said they found the heat had been turned off for the winter but the water was left running. As a result, MacKay said a number of pipes froze and others broke. MacKay said the city Water Board has since shut off water to the entire building.
“Unfortunately, those pipes were all in the fire protection system,” MacKay said. “So, the building as it stands right now has no internal fire protection system.”
The city condemned the building in 2009 due to lack of an operational fire protection system. The condemnation was lifted after the owners brought the system into working condition.
MacKay also reported the electricity is no longer on the building, meaning the elevators are not operable, posing another cause for concern for the fire department.
“If we were to have an emergency in that building, it would be a long time before we would be able to access it because we would have to climb up the stairs,” he said.
MacKay turned the matter over to the city’s Department of Code Enforcement and said he expected some official notification to be issued by the city perhaps as early as today.
The 12-story, 193-room hotel is owned by Amidee Hotels and Resorts, Inc. The company purchased the building in 2007 and had originally hoped to renovate and re-open it by last spring. Work has been stalled at the site for several months. In January, Amidee Capital Group, the Texas-based parent company to Amidee Hotels and Resorts, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Published reports indicated the hotel and resort affiliate was not part of the larger company’s reorganization plan.
Lawmakers asked for an update on the project last month in light of the financial news. They also expressed concern about the condition of the hotel building and the potential for it to be targeted by vandals looking to steal copper pipe and other potentially valuable materials.
Economic Development Director Peter Kay said he spoke to both the current and former managers of the building and was told that no “scavenging” has taken place. Kay said both managers told him a substantial amount of plumbing, heating and air conditioning work has been completed. Kay said interior finishing, drywall, floors and bathroom fixtures were among the items that still needed to be finished.
“A lot of work has been done, but there’s still a lot more to do,” Kay said.
Kay told lawmakers the current owners have some work to do on their property taxes as well. He said the owners currently owe about $119,000 in back taxes. He said the amount includes property taxes owed to the city for the second quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of this year as well as $12,000 in county taxes and roughly $30,000 owed to the city school district for 2009.
Dyster noted the city has not provided any economic incentives to the project. He said the developers were offered financial support in the form of a grant from the USA Niagara Development Corp., but ultimately decided to turn the offer down. Dyster expressed hope that the project could still come to fruition despite the recent setbacks.
“We don’t have money tied up in that building, but obviously it’s a large building downtown and it’s very important to the economic health of the downtown area,” he said.
