This hotel was so filthy they’re tearing it down: ‘It was a diabolical place.’

A hotel near uptown that became a symbol of Charlotte’s affordable housing shortage last year will be torn down.

Wrecking crews have started demolishing the Airport Parkway Inn and Suites on Wilkinson Boulevard, a city official said Tuesday.

The 60-room hotel has remained vacant since September 2017 when city inspectors investigated complaints of unsafe and squalid conditions, including rooms with no heat or air conditioning, piles of garbage, bedbugs and broken windows.

But someone intentionally set a fire earlier this month that damaged parts of the structure, said Capt. Dennis Gist, a spokesman for the Charlotte Fire Department.

The hotel garnered attention from city leaders last year after an Observer report detailed how low-income families with children, the disabled and others paid as much as $1,000 a month to live in rooms with faulty plumbing, inoperable smoke detectors and roaches.

In emails, city council members Julie Eiselt and Vi Lyles, who is now mayor, asked administrators to study options for dealing with the motel, including taking control of the building.

City officials late last year determined that the building should be demolished.

“It was a diabolical place, and I’m so glad it’ll be gone,” said Mecklenburg County Commissioner Pat Cotham, who lobbied city officials to impose stiff sanctions against the hotel operator. “It’s a win for vulnerable people that that place can’t take advantage of them anymore.”

But officials said they don’t know what happened to the people who depended on the hotel for a home.

The Airport Parkway was part of a hidden housing sector in the city, where hundreds of people suffering from addiction and mental illness, or simply with little money, rely on weekly hotels and motels for permanent shelter.

Advocates for the poor say that while the buildings are often unsanitary or decrepit, the businesses fill a need since Charlotte lacks enough affordable housing and homeless shelters are typically full.

Tenants stay for months or even years because they can’t scrape together enough money for a deposit, utilities and other costs for an apartment.

A nonprofit moved more than a dozen families and individuals from the Airport Parkway into a west Charlotte apartment complex last year. Others remained in their rooms until they were forced out.

“I’m not sure” where they went, said Sammy Cheema, who owns the building. “They probably went to another motel.”

Fighting roaches, bedbugs

The building has stood on Wilkinson Boulevard for more than 40 years.

City inspectors have cited the Airport Parkway for more than 20 code violations since the beginning of 2015, including “dilapidated conditions on premises” and trash and debris.

Delores Jordan leased the building from Cheema and operated the hotel since 2015. Jordan promoted the place as therapeutic housing for the homeless and drug addicted.

But in December 2016, a 65-year-old man wasn’t discovered for three days after he died in his room near a suspected crack pipe, according to a state medical examiner’s report. He died from cocaine toxicity and the use of oxycodone and diazepam, an anti-anxiety drug, the report said.

Former tenants interviewed over the last year described deplorable conditions.

Spencer Proctor said he lived in the motel for about a year with his wife and young child.

“We were fighting roaches and bedbugs,” said Proctor, who lived in the hotel from September 2015 to September 2016. “More days than not, my wife would come home and say, ‘What is that smell?’ It was garbage dumped in the hallway. Dirty diapers. It was normal.”

Proctor said he suffered a heart attack in 2015 that left him unable to work. He received $488 monthly in Social Security disability benefits.

The average two-bedroom apartment in Charlotte costs more than $1,100 a month. City reports show Charlotte has a shortage of about 34,000 affordable housing units needed to meet demand.

“We had nowhere else to go,” said Proctor, who was staying with relatives.

Reached via text message this week, Jordan declined comment.

She previously has acknowledged the building had roaches and bedbugs. But she said tenants exaggerated the issues and sometimes brought bedbugs and other pests when they moved to the hotel from the streets or homeless shelters.

Tough choice

The property’s future remains unclear.

Charlotte Code Enforcement Division Manager Ben Krise said the city issued a demolition order because the cost of needed repairs to the hotel exceeded more than half the building’s tax value.

Tax records list the building’s value at roughly $1.8 million. Cheema, the building owner, said he bought the building in 2002, when the property sold for $725,000, according to tax records.

City rules allow the owner to choose whether to make the repairs or tear down the structure.

Cheema said he is paying $400,000 to have the building demolished because he felt he had no choice under the circumstances. He said he doesn’t know what he will do with the 2.2-acre site.

Cheema said he once operated a hotel in the building and is now sad it is being torn down.

“It is like I’m living in a depression,” he said.