Burned hotel building being razed

Firefighters battle the blaze Friday at Hot Springs’ historic Majestic Hotel and work to protect nearby buildings.

Firefighters battle the blaze Friday at Hot Springs’ historic Majestic Hotel and work to protect nearby buildings.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

HOT SPRINGS - After nearly 20 hours of fighting flames that spread through the oldest part of the historic Majestic Hotel in downtown Hot Springs, crews began tearing down that section Friday afternoon to attack the center of the fire, which was thought to have retreated into the structure’s belly.

By 1 p.m. Friday, firefighters had halted their continuous spray of the building because the flames were no longer visible from the roof or windows. Before that, Hot Springs Fire Chief Ed Davis said crews were pouring 500,000 gallons of water per hour onto the yellow-brick part of the hotel, which caught fire sometime before 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

As the building still smoldered and smoke wafted from some windows Friday evening, firefighters planned to continue spraying sporadically during and after demolition. Nearby structures were also doused to prevent the fire from spreading.

City officials praised the fire departments for containing the flames to just the one building and asked residents Friday morning to conserve water to aid the effort. Nearly 60 firefighters from area agencies and all of Hot Springs’ fire equipment responded to the blaze, attracting dozens of onlookers throughout Thursday night and into Friday.

The city received permission Friday from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to demolish the part of the hotel that burned, because the weakened structure posed a serious safety threat. The fire had already destroyed much of the upper part of the top floor before demolition crews began work.

Tearing it down was the only option because the fire weakened an already unstable structure, Hot Springs police Cpl. McCrary Means said.

Multiple fire crews are currently battling a fire at the now-vacant Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs. The structure has taken severe damage and those on the scene say they are expecting to fight the blaze well into the early morning hours.

Crews battle hotel fire in Hot Springs

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Means said a cause hasn’t been determined. However, City Manager David Watkins told the Sentinel-Record newspaper Friday that the fire, which began in the middle of the fifth floor, is of a “suspicious origin” and will be investigated.

“The yellow building is a total loss. Hopefully someone will come in and redevelop the remaining structures, or we are going to have to take other measures to make it safe or remove it,” Watkins said.

Davis said firefighting efforts were hampered Thursday night by the brick cladding, or covering, of the building, which prevented water from penetrating the structure and getting into the bowels of the building.

The Majestic Hotel burns in downtown Hot Springs.

The Majestic Hotel fire

Video available Watch Video
The Majestic Hotel burns in downtown Hot Springs.

Majestic Hotel fire

Video available Watch Video

Hot Springs Police Chief David Flory said the strong windows of the building also proved to be a challenge. Water from the high-pressure hoses couldn’t break them, and “we had to knock out the windows with some of our tear gas,” he said.

The city plans to ask the Environmental Quality Department to waive requirements for air and water quality and expected agency workers to arrive in Hot Springs to begin assessments.

Watkins said the building is also known to contain asbestos, and “we don’t know” whether the Environmental Quality Department will allow any of the material to be placed in the Garland County landfill.

City Attorney Brian Albright contacted the hotel’s owner, Garrison Hassenflu of Kansas City, Mo., by phone Friday morning to inform him of the fire. Albright is to meet with Hassenflu and attorney Ray Owen Jr. of Hot Springs at 10 a.m. today to discuss the owner’s next steps.

“Obviously, he was devastated by the tragedy of the fire and is trying to get his head around what steps, if any, that he needs to take going forward,” Albright said. “Obviously, the city’s first order of business is to get the fire extinguished and get the property safe. Certainly the expenses that are associated with all of that can, and I would expect would, be a claim against the property itself.”

The city can put a lien on the property until it is reimbursed for demolition costs, Albright said. The city hasn’t begun figuring up the cost of the emergency response, he added.

“I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at cost. We had 60 firemen on duty with every piece of equipment that the city has for the last 24 hours. Ten thousand gallons of water per minute, and, of course, we are going to have to redirect some traffic, and policing the area is costly.

“We will have to demolish a good portion of the hotel, and that’s going to come at a pretty high price tag. And there will be landfill charges,” Albright said.

The original structure, which is the part that caught fire, was built in 1902 after a hotel of the same name and location was torn down.

The Southwest Hotel Co., which also owns the historic Arlington Hotel in downtown Hot Springs, owned the Majestic from 1929 to 2006, when it closed and was sold to the nonprofit organization Arc of Arkansas. Hassenflu bought it sometime afterward.

Hassenflu didn’t return an email or a message sent through his attorney Friday. His attorney declined to comment.

YEARS OF NEGLECT

The hotel - a complex with multiple structures - had been vacant since 2006. When Arc of Arkansas bought it that year, the group hoped to turn it into a mix of retail space, apartments and condominiums, but it failed to gain the funding.

City inspectors knew the Majestic Hotel was a potential fire hazard. In 2012, fire inspectors began evaluating the conditions of historic structures in the city and issued a report on the Majestic. The oldest part of the complex, referred to as“the Yellow Brick,” was found to be in need of immediate attention.

The five-story building had deteriorated quickly from water getting in through a holey roof, the report said. Photos of its interior showed mold, gaps in ceilings, vegetation growing on some floors, extensive water damage and overall poor conditions.

“Under the best of conditions, the Yellow Brick is weak in numerous locations. In the event of fire it is anticipated that portions of the Yellow Brick will begin to fail at an early stage in the fires development,” the fire chief wrote in the 2012 report. “To place the city’s firefighters inside the Yellow Brick building under firefighting conditions is to needlessly expose them to injury or death.”

Because of those structural concerns, Davis didn’t allow any firemen to enter the building to fight the flames. The structural issues also played a role in the quick decision to tear the building down.

The Hot Springs Board of Directors began addressing fire concerns downtown as recently as December, when it passed “aggressive fire protection measures” mandated of property owners, Watkins said.

“The Fire Department is working with property owners to bring unsafe structures up to some life-safety code requirements,” Watkins said Friday. “The least expensive and probably easiest way to do that would be to install fire sprinklers. If we would have had those in the Majestic, this fire would not have spread like it did.”

DISRUPTION TO DOWNTOWN

Steve Arrison, chief executive of the tourism bureau Visit Hot Springs, told the Sentinel-Record that downtown business owners had contacted him Friday morning, wondering when Central Avenue would be open to traffic. Some relayed that city officials were “doing a great job” with accommodating concerns regarding visitors being unable to drive to downtown businesses, he said.

“Obviously, [the fire] is a tragedy, but everybody still has to make a living,” Arrison said.

Arrison said the road leading to Hot Springs Mountain Tower would be closed until Monday to “alleviate traffic in that area.”

“I’m not happy about losing a weekend, but these things don’t happen that often,” he said.

Mike Pettey, president of Hot Springs’ Downtown Merchants Association and owner of the Ohio Club restaurant, said rumors that the entire downtown area would be shut down Friday morning caused a brief panic for some business owners. But after they realized only sections of Central Avenue were blocked off and that the street opened completely at 1 p.m., business continued as usual.

“This morning, trying to get out the correct information was the hardest part,” Pettey said Friday. “As soon as the road opened, we were packed for lunch immediately. I can’t tell any difference in the number of customers than any other cold, rainy day.”

Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Josie Fernandez said Friday afternoon that the fire had not affected any park property or services other than the closure of the Hot Springs Mountain road andtower.

“Throughout last night after the fire started, and today, all of the traffic north and south was dumped on the park. We only have so many law enforcement rangers to go around and on a two-lane winding road, a tiny fender bender would bring the entire county to a standstill,” she said.

Students at the nearby Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts were let out of classes Friday and will return Monday, providing for time to flush the campus air systems, spokesman Donnie Sewell said in a news release.

A WAKE-UP CALL

Members of the Hot Springs community mourned the loss of the historic hotel Friday.

Liz Robbins, executive director of the Garland County Historical Society, remembered a time when the hotel was a lively part of downtown.

“The building was a grand place for visitors of Hot Springs to stay and take the baths. It was also a place through the decades for residents to gather in the restaurants for meetings and to shop in the shops. It was just a big part of life here,” Robbins said.

“And of course, the Majestic buildings are in such a special site at the intersection of Whittington and Park avenues at the end of Bathhouse Row at the fountain. It’s just a landmark iconic image of Hot Springs, and to lose that is terrible.”

She and other preservationists are hoping the situation will awaken residents and property owners to the needs of historical structures.

“I do hope that it reminds people of how fragile our historic heritage can be and how we need to work to protect and preserve the architecture that we still have,” she said.

Last month, Hot Springs native Brenda Brandenburg started a Facebook group to campaign for the development of the Majestic. “Save Her Majesty: Restoration of The Majestic Hotel” gained 600 likes within a day of being posted Feb. 3. On Friday, it boasted more than 2,400 likes.

Brandenburg had hoped to form a group that would work with her to demand the historic site be revived. In fact, less than an hour before receiving news that the hotel caught fire, Brandenburg was meeting with an entrepreneur who said he had some potential investors in mind for the site.

The two began talks of a downtown vision that would call for restoration and urban development. So when a text message appeared on her cellphone informing her of the fire, she thought the sender was making an inappropriate joke.

“When I found out it was real, I was just in total shock,” Brandenburg said Friday. “We were just starting to stir things up and get people on board, and suddenly this place burned. I would never make accusations toward anyone and I know that things can happen, but it was just suspicious and it crushed me.”

Pettey noted that the Majestic was already a far cry from what it was in its heyday, when sports teams training in the city would frequent the hotel. But he, too, said this is an opportunity for residents to get passionate about reviving and restoring downtown.

“The Majestic slowly but surely lost its appeal over the years. It’s really had a rough time. … But maybe this will get the attention on downtown Hot Springs and turn into a positive deal where we are going to start doing things. We are all pretty optimistic downtown,” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Don Thomason and Caleb Taylor of the Sentinel-Record.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/01/2014