Carmichael Road hotel demolished after two-alarm fire burns it down Tuesday night
An abandoned hotel on Carmichael Road has been demolished after a two-alarm fire gutted it Tuesday evening. Fortunately, no one was injured in the blaze.
When Action 8 News visited the site on Wednesday, a homeless man walked up and was digging through the rubble. He was yelling and very upset because he said he would have no place to get warm tonight and out of the cold.
Smoke and flames could be seen from I-85 and for miles across the Eastern Boulevard Tuesday night, as three floors of the abandoned Country Inn and Suites Hotel on Carmichael Road burned.
“Supposedly there were some rooms in there that basically looked like Dexter you know. Like it was just blood splatter and stuff everywhere, and they just never do anything about it. It’s one of those where they just didn’t talk about it or do anything about it,” said Kelly Vosen.
Kelly Vosen is the owner of Vosen Civil Excavation and works in the area. He says the property has been a hotbed of criminal activity for years, and should have been demolished long ago. “I’ve heard people now saying it was like a homeless shelter, but that’s not really what it was. I’m not saying there weren’t people staying there for that, but it was much more like a place that people could go and hide. If you were missing anything in this neighborhood, it ended up stolen and ended up there. We got like $40,000 worth of stuff stolen out of our job trailer. There have been like four or five people that have been killed in there because, you know, it is the kind of place where you can kill somebody and get away with it. The city knew about it the whole time and hasn’t done anything about it the whole time. They’re just kind of like, if you bring it up to them, oh it’s private property. It is what it is but they still have a responsibility to keep people safe,” said Vosen. Action 8 News has not been able to confirm Vosen’s claims of murders occurring at that specific location.
District 5 City Councilman C.C. Calhoun confirmed that the city is aware of the illegal activity there and says absentee land owners are the main hurdle to clearing out abandoned buildings like this.
“One of the biggest things that we have done in this past year, and with our new budget, is we hired a real estate lawyer to kind of help us with this process that so that we don’t get hung up in court every time we get blocked by absentee landlords coming in who have the right to refuse & the right to redemption after five or six years. This particular property had been this way about 10 years,” said Calhoun.
Shopping carts taken from nearby stores sit filled with clothing and there are mattresses where people slept – all signs multiple people took refuge here.
“A month ago I had the sanitation apartment out here cleaning up so it don’t affect these businesses right here. I had sanitation come and we did a sting operation over here, and we made several arrest to try to clean up this community. But we need to get these things down level to the ground and get help from our mental health faith-based community. We need more than just one warming center. We need them throughout the city,” said Calhoun.
Councilman Calhoun says the city has been working with the Salvation Army for several years to find a new location where they could have a shelter. He thinks that the Old Hayneville Road School would be a great possibility because the facilities are big enough, and there are public health entities around that area that could provide needed services as well.
The Bureau of Investigations is still trying to figure out what caused the fire that burned down the hotel.
