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Enforce fire code at Biltmore

Here's a burning question: Why are Largo fire officials and the owners of the 109-year-old Belleview Biltmore Resort & Spa allowing guests to stay there even one more day if the building has "dangerous deficiencies" in its fire safety equipment?

And why has this situation been allowed to continue for well over a year?

This is appalling irresponsibility by the owner of the hotel, Belleview Biltmore Resort Ltd., and also begs the question of whether fire officials, whose job it is to safeguard the public, are sufficiently aggressive in enforcing the fire codes.

Meanwhile, hotel guests are blissfully ignorant of the potential dangers when they go to sleep each night in a building often referred to as the largest wooden structure in the world.

A recent story by St. Petersburg Times staff writer Lorri Helfand revealed that the hotel was notified repeatedly for more than a year about life safety code violations. For example, on Oct. 4, 2004, fire officials wrote hotel managers that they had found:

No automatic sprinkler coverage in some parts of the hotel. The original fire sprinkler system is some 60 years old.

Smoke alarms in some guest rooms were battery-operated models, rather than the code-required electric ones, or were not installed properly or were missing entirely.

In some hallways, the smoke detectors were left attached to the old ceiling when a new, lower ceiling was installed.

Many sprinkler heads were painted over or corroded.

One stairwell was blocked by a locked door.

Those deficiencies related only to the hotel's alarms and sprinklers because inspections that would address, among other things, water supply, electrical systems, storage of flammables and structural problems, had not been done at that time.

Hotel managers responded in a Nov. 17, 2004, letter that some fire safety problems already had been fixed and other repairs were being planned. Yet a year later, on Oct. 4, 2005, Largo Fire Rescue, which oversees fire protection in Belleair, said the only item on the long list of deficiencies that the hotel had completely addressed was the blocked stairwell. So they ordered the Belleview Biltmore, managed by Trust Hotels, to provide a detailed plan for repairs within 10 days.

On Oct. 14, 2005, the hotel sent an apology for not doing the work promised a year earlier, and an excuse: The hotel was for sale, wrote chief operating officer Samuel K. Downing, and one of the parties that wanted to buy it likely would demolish it. "That would have obviously eliminated the need for the fire systems proposed and agreed upon," he wrote.

What is obvious is that if the hotel owner did not intend to operate the hotel safely while negotiations on its sale proceeded, the facility should have been closed, at least to overnight guests.

Today there is no completed contract for sale of the Belleview Biltmore. The hotel owner has filed paperwork for a permit to demolish the building, but the town of Belleair has not approved it and in fact wants the building saved. The hotel continues to be open for business, and the negotiations between the hotel and Largo fire officials go on and on.

At the insistence of fire officials, the hotel finally has hired outside experts to study fire safety issues and make recommendations. But Downing declared last month that the hotel "is very much cash-strapped," which raises concerns about whether the experts' recommendations could even be accomplished.

A Largo fire official last month referred to a recent inspection that showed "the non-compliance of the facility in the areas of structural integrity, electrical, fire protection systems, notification systems, etc., far exceeds the scope of validating code compliance."

If the safety of guests at the Belleview Biltmore cannot be assured today, Largo Fire Rescue must make sure that guests don't stay there.

[Last modified January 8, 2006, 00:44:19]