Grand Palace Hotel

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Judge orders Grand Palace closed

 

Hotel infested with rodents, state health official testifies

Thursday, November 25, 2004 By Leslie Williams

Staff writer

A Civil District Court judge ordered the New Orleans Grand Palace Hotel closed to the public after a state health official testified Wednesday that the 17-story building is infested with rodents.

 

The Grand Palace, at Canal Street and Claiborne Avenue, will remain closed until at least Monday, when another hearing on a temporary restraining order will be held.

 

 

Despite pleas that closing the hotel during the weekend of the Bayou Classic would be "catastrophic," Civil District Court Judge Kern A. Reese opted to uphold a temporary restraining order he signed Monday. The order had been held in abeyance until attorneys for the hotel and the state Department of Health and Hospitals, which sought the closure, could present their arguments Wednesday.

 

Each side was allowed one witness. Gordon P. Serou Jr., the attorney representing the hotel, chose Ron Palmer, who has been supervising improvements at the hotel. Glenn Cambre, the attorney representing the state health department, chose Dr. Louis Trachtman, an assistant state health officer.

 

Trachtman reinforced claims in the state's petition for the temporary restraining order. He said the "rodent infestation" remains a threat to public health.

 

Palmer testified that the hotel had been cooperating with the health department and has addressed nearly all of its complaints. Asked by Serou whether the forced closing would be catastrophic, Palmer said, "Yes."

 

After the hearing, the order was taken out of abeyance and a deputy with Civil Sheriff Paul Valteau's office served the hotel with the notice at 12:40 p.m., officially closing the business to the public.

 

 

 

Fresh evidence found

 

Palmer rejected the state's assertion that the hotel is infested with rats. He said he has seen "maybe 13 to 15" rodents in eight years in the building, which Louisiana Worship Hospitality LLC bought a year ago from the Crescent on Canal LLC and Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Capital LLC for $1.1 million.

 

Reese said one rodent is one too many.

 

The judge ordered another inspection of the hotel Wednesday after Palmer complained that health officials had not visited the hotel since Nov. 16, when inspectors found rat droppings and dried rat urine. After inspectors reported back to Reese, the judge decided not to rescind the temporary restraining order.

 

"The order stays in effect," court spokesman Walt Pierce said.

 

Inspectors found "new" rat urine on the first floor in the kitchen area Wednesday, Cambre said. Inspectors also found fresh rodent droppings in Room 715, he said.

 

At the hearing Wednesday, Palmer urged the court to grant the hotel special permission to allow guests to stay in rooms on the sixth and seventh floors this weekend.

 

Palmer said the Grand Palace, which had no guests Wednesday, will comply with the order. Guests scheduled to stay at the Grand Palace this weekend will instead stay at the Sleep Inn, 334 O'Keefe Ave., in the Central Business District, he said.

 

 

 

Extermination under way

 

In an effort to demonstrate the hotel's efforts to cooperate with the state health department, Serou submitted a yearlong contract signed Tuesday between the Imperial Exterminating Co. and the Grand Palace for rodent control. It states that the $1,295-per-month contract covering all rooms, floors, exterior and the parking lot will be canceled "if payment is not received within a 60-day period."

 

Imperial Exterminating has been working to get rid of rodents at the hotel at 1732 Canal St. for the past two months. The company, though, had been restricted to a portion of the hotel, said Alan Spahn, a manager for the company. Imperial Exterminating had treated only 400 of 1,036 rooms in the hotel and the management had placed limitations on the type of products exterminators could use, Spahn said.

 

Since the Louisiana Worship Hospitality LLC bought the hotel, the state health department and the Better Business Bureau of the Greater New Orleans Area have received a litany of complaints from guests visiting from throughout the United States. One of those complaints was of a rat bolting out of an air vent.

 

In August 2002, a class-action lawsuit against the building's former owners was filed alleging "complaints were ignored" by agents and owners of what was then called the Crescent on Canal. The agents and owners "knew or should have known that plaintiffs had been exposed to fungal substances such as mold and mold spores, which were growing on building materials as well as the by-products of the mold or mold spores that were released into the air." "These substances," the suit said, "were the cause of plaintiffs' medical problems."

 

The Crescent on Canal LLC is a defendant in the lawsuit as well as Credit Suisse First Boston Corp., THC of New Orleans LLC, ABC Insurance Co. and Universal Hotel Service Inc.

 

The case is scheduled to be heard in Civil District Court on Feb. 14.

 

 

 

To-do list

 

Ashok "Eddie" Bhatt, the Grand Palace's general manager, has said workers have corrected about 99 percent of the things guests have complained about and that "only a very small percentage of guests have complained."

 

Bhatt once was married to Hemlata Vyas of California, a member of the Louisiana Worship Hospitality LLC, and thus an owner of the Grand Palace.

 

The temporary restraining order also instructs the hotel to:

 

-- Remove all trash, debris and broken equipment from the first and second floors.

 

-- Seal all holes and openings with rodent-proof materials.

 

-- Ventilate and adequately illuminate the laundry-storage-warehouse area.

 

-- Use a linen service until the laundry area is cleaned, rodent-proofed, ventilated and provided with adequate illumination, after finding an appropriate place to store the clean linen.

 

-- Address the state sanitary code violations found in inspection reports.

 

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Leslie Williams can be reached at lwilliams@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3358.