Motel not such a lovely place

The El Rancho Motel, just west of Sedalia on U.S. 50, is wide open.

It might be a little hard for tenants to get to their rooms with the crumbling brick facade and broken windows littering the walkways. Also, the rooms are a little messy, with the holes in the ceiling, the insulation piles and the weeds growing in the windows.

But the doors are open, the rooms are well ventilated and, judging by the discarded beer cans and sweat pants, not every room is vacant.
 The motel, at 21624 U.S. 50, has been abandoned since 2004. The years have not been kind to the property, which has become what some term an “eyesore” on the western edge of town.

“I think it needs to be burnt down, tore up; something needs to be done,” said Rick Hunt, co-owner of Auto Glass Express. The front windows of Hunt’s business overlook the dilapidated hotel. “It needs to be cleaned up, anyway.”

Cleaning up the site has proved easier said than done, says the Pettis County Commission.

“The legal authority we have out there is limited. It’s not nonexistent, but it’s limited,” said Presiding Commissioner Rusty Kahrs. “At the end of the day, it’s still private property.”

Kahrs sent a letter on July 1, 2007, to Ramu Patel outlining the problems and asking him to accept responsibility. Since that letter, Kahrs said he’s had “several” phone conversations with Patel about the building.

While Ramu Patel was identified by the commission’s letter as the hotel’s owner, county assessment records list the owner as Rakesh Patel. Ramu and Rakesh Patel share an address at an Adairsville, Ga., hotel.

A woman who answered the phone at the Adairsville hotel listed as Ramu and Rakesh Patel’s address said Ramu Patel was away from the office until August. When contacted by phone Friday afternoon, Rakesh Patel said he did not have time to talk about the El Rancho immediately but would try to phone back with a response. 

Rakesh Patel did not return that call by late Friday evening.

The Patels are sitting on a potentially valuable piece of property. As of Jan. 1, 2007, the market value of the 4.5 acre property was assessed at just less than $60,000, with taxes at just more than $1,000, according to the Pettis County Assessor’s Office.

That value was greatly reduced from its potential because of the undeveloped nature of the land and dilapidated motel, said Pettis County Assessor Dean Dohrman.

The commission looked into using the motel as a burn exercise to train firefighters, but that idea ran afoul of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Before a building can be used for fire training, any suspected asbestos or petroleum-based products must be removed. State authorities believe the building has both.

“With the suspected asbestos out there, obviously it presents a potential environmental hazard,” Kahrs said.

With attempts to set fire to the motel thwarted, Kahrs said the commission members hope local and state regulators can help.

Shenandoah Rhoads, with the Pettis County Health Department, said the building doesn’t fall under his organization’s reach.

“Basically since it’s just a derelict building, we don’t have any authority to deal with a situation like that,” Rhoads said. The department would have authority if it were to re-open.

Karl Fett, director of DNR’s Kansas City regional office, said his office has sent the motel’s owner a letter warning him the site was in violation of state rules on solid waste.

“It’s not legal to dispose of solid waste like that, haphazardly,” Fett said. Solid waste refers to the discarded televisions, mattresses and other rubbish that litter the site. “We’re requiring him to clean up the solid waste that’s there, according to state rules,” Fett said.

Non-compliance eventually could lead to fines or administrative penalties. “The end point is we turn it over to the attorney general, and he takes it further,” Fett said.

But there is more at the building that concerns county officials than environmental hazards.

“I think it’s a good place to store stolen property,” said Western Commissioner Larry Wilson. Wilson got first-hand experience in how well it could store such ill-gained material during a recent visit to the site, when he and Kahrs happened upon several boxes of copper wiring that had been stolen from Pro Energy.

Pettis County Sheriff Kevin Bond said the site could potentially affect the surrounding area.

“I think that while I’m hesitant to say ‘Yes it’s going to attract crime,’ it certainly has the potential for that to occur,” Bond said.

Bond cited the “broken windows” theory, which says that if you let an area become blighted, problems in that area tend to increase and spread. “You’ve just got a place that’s abandoned, and all those rooms are open. Who knows what all goes on out there?” he said.

Kahrs was reticent to discuss eminent domain seizure.

“I don’t even want to go there yet. I don’t even want to explore it until all other options are exhausted,” he said.

Kahrs said that while such “nuclear options” remain, the commission would not pursue any such measure without the support of the community, and even then the measure would likely face a public vote. 

“The threshold to necessitate it would be very high,” he said.

Still, business owners near the former hotel say it could benefit the whole community if something was done about the location.

“If all this was cleaned up, it would be much better,” said Vicki Jones, whose Scoops custard stand sits a few hundred yards away from the El Rancho. “I think it would look better for anybody coming into Sedalia from the west.”