The City of Houston has ordered a high-profile downtown vacant hotel be designated a dangerous building.
Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office said officials with the city’s contract compliance office met with owners of the former Days Inn Tuesday.
The city is requesting property owners remediate the graffiti, provide 24-hour security, use cinder blocks to secure all ground entrances into the building and work to repair all the windows.
“They will work to complete all of this in the next 2 to 3 weeks,” a mayor’s office statement read.
KHOU 11 News met with SFK Development, Inc. partners following their meeting with “police officers inspectors and public works engineers."
The partners said they have been unable to secure financing for their planned $85 million development project at 801 - 803 St. Joseph Pkwy.
The owners said they are “slowly going through the process,” and the design of their project is 90 percent complete.
Partners said they have already been given the green light by Holiday Inn’s parent company to franchise the company’s first triple-brand hotel.
Co-owner Nasir Nadeem, M.D., said the development will contain more than 450 guest rooms, but they continue to search for financing.
“We would like to have a commitment from the city for financial help,” Nadeem said.
A statement from Mayor Turner’s office says the vacant hotel “continues to be a problem for the City of Houston,” and says they have enlisted help from their legal team and code enforcement officers.
“We have issued over 20 citations to the owner as a result of broken windows,” the mayor’s office statement read.