A Lafayette administrative judge told the co-owner of the recently shuttered Express Inn motel that it had two weeks to present a buyer interested in purchasing the blighted property or else it would be torn down.
Judge Stuart Paul Bowie held on immediately ordering the property condemned and demolished after co-owner Henil Patel said he was speaking with a possible buyer interested in rehabilitating the property.
Specifically, Bowie asked the buyer to attend a Nov. 18 hearing to provide detailed plans and timelines for completing the property and when they plan to purchase it.
Bowie ordered that “garbage” on the property be removed over the next 30 days, which Patel pushed back on, saying it would be too expensive and take more time to clear out debris.
Patel declined an interview at the meeting but ownership later provided comment over text message.
“We believe the City’s handling of this property has been unfair and inconsistent,” ownership wrote, adding that his company had begun addressing 76 code violations the property was flagged for.
Those violations included a lack of fire alarms, mold and unsound support beams.
“Once it became clear that [the] process would take time, the City changed course and filed a nuisance abatement action instead,” they wrote.
Conversations around selling the property began before the district court issued an injunction, ordering the property to shut down immediately and barring it from operating as a motel for the next five years, Patel told the judge at a Wednesday hearing with Lafayette’s Administrative Adjudication Bureau.
The property has sat vacant since Oct. 9 and the ownership group, HP Hospitality, has no intention of reopening the property themselves, James Caruso, Patel’s attorney, told the judge. Caruso said the injunction complicated ongoing negotiations with the unknown buyer and that the owners would need 120 days to sell the property.
Patel told the judge the potential buyer was interested in turning the property into an “extended stay apartment style facility.”
“We have a potential buyer who has plans to bring this property to life and repurpose it,” ownership wrote to The Current.
Since purchasing the property nine years ago, Patel said his company had invested in and, up until recently, had been actively upgrading it.
The property was one of two on the Evangeline Thruway that the district court ordered to cease operations due to the high volume of police calls, accusing ownership of knowingly allowing crimes to take place on the premises.
The Express Inn was ordered to shut down immediately because of code violations and criminal activity, LCG said in a press release at the time. The property generated 1,902 calls for service and 294 police reports since January 2023 and police had seized more than $114,658 worth of illegal drugs during the same period.
The other property, the Plantation Motor Inn, was given 45 days to shut down.
The sudden closure of the Express Inn left tenants, some of whom relied on extended-stay motels for housing, scrambling to find accommodations. Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness and Housing has handled cases and provided support since the properties closed.
LCG used a rarely cited Louisiana law to shut down so-called “nuisance properties,” or properties where owners are suspected of allowing criminal activity. The civil statute allows local government to issue injunctions that force property owners to cease operations for the next five years.
LCG has presented the approach as a strategy for combating crime and blight.
