GREENWOOD, Ind. — The city of Greenwood is shutting down a troubled hotel on Main Street.
13 Investigates has shared issues at the Red Carpet Inn & Fanta Suites for years.
Recently, the city's plan commission ordered hotel be vacated by 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, after repeated inspections found numerous violations with no subsequent repairs or improvement.
Signs are up on the front doors, indicating the hotel's impending closure, although the doors were still unlocked Wednesday afternoon. Once it's shut down, the owner will be given a chance to bring in crews to make renovations and get things up to code, without guests present.
The problems at the hotel have been persistent and well-documented.
Rolling up to the Red Carpet Inn and Fanta Suites happens every other night for Greenwood police.
From overdoses outside, to drugs and deaths discovered inside, this hotel had 165 police runs last year and has had 151 so far in 2022, according to the Greenwood Police Department.
That's on top of hundreds of health violations over the years.
Officers and city leaders say 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."
But now, the city's had enough: revoking the hotel's certificate of occupancy, essentially shutting it down.
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, before the plan commission ultimately issued the order to vacate.
The owner, according to city leaders, agreed to the order on Monday.
"We saw bedbugs, we saw cockroaches, we saw mold, we saw ceilings caving in," Myers said. "Nothing had been done from the year before and it had actually deteriorated even worse."
As recent as this week, one guest left early because of what he called "dangerous" conditions.
Austin Skow was in town for work and chose the hotel based on Google pictures and because everything else was booked, with the FFA Convention taking up many local hotel rooms.
"Pictures look fine," Skow said. "But it's not. Smells like mold, first off. I finally get in there and it is just the most disgusting hotel I've ever stayed in, to be honest with you."
Now the owner has to check everyone out, so he can make repairs and create a renovation plan before a November hearing. His staff, meanwhile, claims they've made improvements recently and claims they were never told everyone had to go.
"Nothing is like the way it was when they were here," Chasity Burris, the hotel's operations manager, said. "And we don't know what to do. We have a lot of residents who live here. Everybody's basically gonna be deemed homeless tonight and we have families here that have children!"
It's unclear right now if there's a relocation plan for those families. And if the hotel's management doesn't bring the building up to code within the time specified, Greenwood will take further action.
"If it doesn't happen, then the city will move forward with condemning the property," Myers said.
City leaders also say this isn't Greenwood's only property pushing the envelope, and after dealing with Fanta Suites, they plan to scrutinize other hotels on Main Street with a history of issues, too.
The Red Roof Inn has had numerous police runs, including 108 in 2021 and 64 so far this year. There were 210 police runs to the InTown Suites last year and 116 to date in 2022.
The mayor is essentially issuing a warning: problem hotels near the gateway to Greenwood had better clean up their act.
"We're just going to start marching down the street," Myers said.
"In the past they've been able to say, 'Look at Fanta Suites. They're worse than us and been able to survive,'" Fillenwarth said. "Well this shows, 'We better do more or you know the city is really getting fed up with this' and you know -- maybe they're next."