-
May 12, 2008 6:04 pm US/Pacific
-
Digg |
Facebook |
E-mail
|
Print
Sam Shane Investigates: Hotel Berry Changes
Reporting
Sam Shane
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―
In the wake of a CBS 13
investigation Sacramento city leaders say big changes are in store for Hotel Berry.
So now we're
asking the question:
what's changed at
the Hotel Berry?
Even the
owners of Hotel Berry admit it's in deplorable shape.
"A lot of people who won't
come downtown that you talked about should be shocked at these conditions,"
admits Craig Adelman of A.F. Evans, Hotel Berry's new corporate owner.
A CBS13
investigation revealed a laundry list of filthy conditions inside the Hotel Berry.
Rodent
droppings, cockroaches, backed-up toilets in community bathrooms and faulty
plumbing, just to name a few.
Following our report earlier in the
week, Sacramento city leaders, from city hall to the fire department, met with
us at the Hotel Berry.
Gustavo Vina, Asst. City Manager:
"How in the world do we allow people to live in that kind of squalor?"
Sam Shane, reporter: "It's a social issue, isn't it?"
Vina: "Yes, but at the end of the day, the city
does this, the city could shut this place down tomorrow."
Shane: "And where do you suggest we put those
people?"
Vina: "There's your problem."
Shane: "Yes, so it's very complex."
The city
has kept the Hotel Berry open to provide low income housing in Sacramento's
downtown.
During our
investigation, we discovered the building's elevator had been running without a
proper permit for three years.
Since our
report, the elevator has been inspected; state regulators say it is now up to
code, though the permit displayed in elevator itself is still outdated.
Then there
are the doors on each floor of the building's main stairwell.
When we
showed pictures of the doors to former California State Fire Marshal Jim McMullen,
he said the broken doors appeared to be violations of California Fire Code.
"They are not required fire
doors" says Sacramento city fire marshal Troy Malaspino.
He says the California building
code states that fire doors are not required in Hotel Berry because the
building has a sprinkler system.
So Malaspino
explains the hotel does not have fire doors; it has what's known as exit
doors.
"When the sprinkler systems
came in (1990's) there was no reason at that point to have a fire-related
door."
Days after
our report aired, all the broken exit doors were fixed, and soon the Hotel Berry
will have fire doors installed.
It'll be
part of a multi-million dollar renovation that's planned to begin in October of
2008.
A.F. Evans,
the new owner of Hotel Berry, is expecting to get more than $8 million
taxpayer dollars to fix up this rundown building.
They promise to gut the place and
make big changes; and they admit, our CBS
13 investigation showed what it's really like inside this building, one that
has already cost taxpayers millions of dollars -- and you'd never know it if
you stepped inside.
Adelman says "I'll be honest I
didn't love the story when I first saw it.
But the fact is, those are the conditions. Those are the conditions that have existed in
the Hotel Berry for years and years and years."
One has to ask 'how and why was it
allowed to get that way'.
Adelman says "we just took over the
property four months ago and we're all about changing that."
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)