Greenwood hotel fails another inspection

GREENWOOD, Ind. — City leaders say a troubled hotel in Greenwood is still unsafe.

The Red Carpet Inn and Fanta Suites was given until the Thanksgiving holiday to show it’s back up to code.

But firefighters, the health department and the city’s building commissioner made a surprise inspection Monday morning, in which they found problems persist.

On deadline day for repairs at the Red Carpet Inn and Fanta Suites, 13News went along as inspectors were back in the building, hoping to see improvements.

Betsy Swearingen, director of the Johnson County Health Department, said what they saw wasn’t nearly enough.

In a room-by-room safety sweep, inspectors found minimal progress.

“Not much improvement. A little bit cleaner, but not to the significance that we needed to see,” Swearingen said, “and no safety… no safety here for anyone.”

With guests gone through a vacate order issued by the Greenwood Planning Commission, the hotel was supposed to clean up its act. The owner had until Thanksgiving to finally bring this hotel into compliance, after hundreds of police runs and health violations.

But after Monday’s inspection, the owner admitted that some people are still living at the hotel, in violation of that order.

Inspectors call the conditions inside alarming. They discovered that some smoke detectors were still not working and say most of the rooms are unlivable.

“We still found some cockroaches, a couple of bedbugs, GFCI’s not operating properly, a lot of mold,” said Greenwood Building Commissioner Kenneth Seal. “We still have one of the rooms that are open to the outdoors completely, plus what appears to be a roof leak that may or may not have been repaired. Just a lot of other items that are in disrepair. Just based on the hallway alone, we couldn’t even think about allowing any occupancy.”

The dangers they documented with photos and notes will be sent to Greenwood’s Planning Commission, which could either force the hotel to come into compliance or order its demolition.

There’s also a hearing set for early December, in which a judge could decide to forcibly vacate the hotel, since there are still a few people staying there.

“They’ve got to meet certain codes. They’ve got to meet certain standards and if they continue to fail to do that, which they have, then we can’t allow them to open,” Seal said. 

For now, the facility will stay closed. Inspectors say it’s simply not safe.