Austintown hotel is shut down

By Ed Runyan

One hotel patron said he was happy living at the hotel since January.

AUSTINTOWN — The Austintown Fire Department closed a hotel along state Route 46 and Interstate 80 on Thursday, after Ohio Edison turned off the hotel’s power for nonpayment.

Lt. Richard Milliron, inspector for the Austintown Fire Department, said he ordered the hotel, formerly known as America’s Best Value Inn and now known as Economy Inn, shut down about 9 a.m.

People staying at the hotel on Clarkins Drive were ordered to leave, some removing their belongings in the dark as late as 3 p.m.

Milliron said the Go Go Girls Cabaret, which is located on the ground floor at one end of the hotel, was also ordered closed because its power is provided by the hotel.

The cabaret, which has had conflict with the fire department and county building inspection department over code violations in the past, will be free to reopen as soon as the power is turned on, Milliron said.

Milliron said there is “nothing the cabaret did wrong.”

Getting power back on, however, will not be enough to allow the hotel to reopen, Milliron said. He said he found a number of fire code violations and apparent building and electrical code violations inside the structure when he went inside Thursday morning.

The hotel will not be allowed to turn the power back on until it passes a county electrical inspection, Milliron said.

One of the biggest problems was that the backup generator, which is supposed to provide electricity to run the fire alarms and emergency lighting and exit signs, didn’t work.

There were also nonfunctioning and missing fire alarms in some of the rooms, wiring problems, remodeling work done to make hotel rooms into more permanent living quarters, and some areas that were run down from “lack of maintenance,” Milliron said.

Mike Patel, the hotel’s manager, said outside the hotel Thursday afternoon that about eight to 10 people were staying at the hotel Thursday before the power went off. He said he didn’t know how long the hotel would be closed and refused to answer any other questions. “Get the hell out of here,” he said.

Milliron said that an alarm for the Go Go Girls Cabaret went off at the Austintown Fire Department when the power went off, causing fire officials to respond to the club.

When they got there, Ohio Edison workers informed him that the power had been turned off for nonpayment, he said.

Because the generator was not working, Milliron ordered the building evacuated and the exterior doors locked, he said. But the exterior door locks did not work, and new locks had to be installed, he said.

No violations were found in the cabaret.

Bill Croucher, who was removing his personal items from the hotel Thursday afternoon, said he had been staying there since January while working a construction job in Youngstown.

He said the price of $200 per week and the treatment he got from staff was excellent.

“They’ve been very, very nice all the way down to the cleaning girls. I don’t have nothing bad to say about them,” he said.

As for finding another place to live, Croucher said: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

runyan@vindy.com