No news on fate of Days Inn
By Anessa Myers
Published in News on October 23, 2007 1:58 PM
The Days Inn on Wayne Memorial Drive, damaged in August by a serious windstorm, might not remain on the site much longer, the hotel's owner says.
Daley Investments officials said they are still talking with their insurance company to determine if the building should be razed and rebuilt, repaired or simply demolished completely and the land used for another purpose.
The company has run a cost analysis to see whether it would be financially better to tear down the structure or to rebuild, but officials have not seen the results yet.
H. Mark Daley, III, president of Daley Investments Inc., has made no decisions yet, so he cannot say if the hotel will remain a hotel.
And he won't know the answer until he gets word from his insurance company, which could be more than a month off, he said.
"I can tell you that we are going along the road of tearing it down," he said, but he cautions that nothing is written in stone.
Until the decision is made, the property will remain in its present condition -- surrounded by a wire fence to keep onlookers from injuring themselves.
Chief Building Inspector Ed Cianfarra said there are no stipulations on how long he or the city has to wait before asking the owners to show progress on the property, but said he wanted to be as fair as he could and will give Daley some more time.
"There will reach a point where I think they have had enough time, and then I will go after them to make a decision," he said. "Until then, I try to be fair and give them a good amount of time to figure things out."
Right now, the hotel grounds are not a safety hazard, Cianfarra said.
"The ground is cleaned up, and there are people there to make sure no one goes on the property," he said.
The public does have to look at the severely damaged hotel building, however, he added.
And city officials agree it is an eyesore.
"I don't want to have an eyesore there for a long period of time," City Manager Joe Huffman said.
He agrees with Cianfarra that city officials are trying to give the owners a fair amount of time to decide how to handle the situation.
"From my understanding, the owner has been trying to move these things along," he said. "I think it's reasonable to try to work with the owner when it's something that wasn't his fault."