GREENWOOD, Ind. — Destruction of an embattled hotel that Greenwood city leaders are poised to take down due to ongoing health and sanitary hazards there has been put off after a judge granted a stay for the project.
A judge in the Johnson County Superior Court prohibited the city from taking action that would destroy the hotel until a full judicial review and decision happened.
The stay was requested by the owner of the Red Carpet Inn & Fanta Suites in Greenwood on April 10. A preliminary injunction order decided back in December 2022 already required tenants to vacate the property while crews worked to fix the unsafe and unsanitary living conditions.
That order allowed Greenwood Police, Fire and Building Departments to have access to the property. The hotel was allowed to make repairs on the property between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Additionally, the judge ordered the hotel to notify everyone "working, residing, staying, sleeping, or carrying out the ordinary activities of daily life" at the hotel of the injunction. The city of Greenwood would be financially responsible for costs and damages that any affected parties incur.
13 Investigates has shared issues at the Red Carpet Inn & Fanta Suites for years.
The problems at the hotel have been persistent and well-documented.
Our investigation found rolling up to the Red Carpet Inn & Fanta Suites happens every other night for Greenwood police.
From overdoses outside to drugs and deaths discovered inside, this hotel had 165 police runs in 2021 and 151 by October 2022, according to the Greenwood Police Department.
That's on top of hundreds of health violations over the years.
Officers and city leaders said it's been a problem property for decades.
"We've had a lot of drug activity. We've had prostitution. We've had people die. We've had murder suspects yanked out of there," said Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers. "It's a drain on my public safety."
"I've been here at this department for 28 years," said Greenwood Assistant Police Chief Matthew Fillenwarth, "and that's been a place I've gone my entire career. I think I've been in about every room there — and not as a guest. I won't even sit on the furniture when I've been in there for work."
In the last few months, city leaders said enough is enough.
Following a hotel manager's overdose death inside in September, the mayor himself went along with police, firefighters and the health department to evaluate conditions.
In October, city leaders revoked the hotel's certificate of occupancy, essentially shutting it down.
Sixteen hours after Greenwood shut down the troubled hotel, 13News went room by room with the city, fire marshal and police as they enforced the order to vacate, making sure guests, workers and people who live at the hotel are gone.
What we witnessed inside was part of what caused the hotel's closure in the first place: cockroaches, open electrical sockets, and disabled smoke alarms.
Red Carpet Inn and Fanta Suites
On Nov. 14, leaders voted unanimously to give the owners until Thanksgiving Day to bring the long-troubled building into compliance.
But when firefighters, the health department and the city's building commissioner made a surprise inspection on Nov. 28, they found problems persisted.
In a room-by-room safety sweep, inspectors found minimal progress.
With guests gone through a vacate order issued by the Greenwood Planning Commission, the hotel was supposed to clean up its act. But after the inspection, the owner admitted that some people are still living at the hotel, in violation of that order.
Inspectors called the conditions inside alarming. They discovered that some smoke detectors were still not working and said 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."
13News spoke with the hotel's owner, Ahmed Mubarak, who denied the problems at his property.
Mubarak told 13News he had made fixes and that Greenwood has treated him unfairly during the order to vacate process.
"It needs some maintenance, yes, but we are trying, and if anybody goes through the property now, he or she will see that things are coming on spec," Mubarak said. "People here feel safe. No unsanitary or unhealthy conditions, and the ultimate judge of any operation of any hotel stay is the guest, is not the health inspector."