Blue Haven Motel in Rocky Top exists no more
Wrecking crews moved in last week and began tearing down the long-time Rocky Top eyesore known as the Blue Haven Motel, and the owner of the property says the land will be for sale, according to City Manager Michael Foster.
The 24-room residential motel at 445 N. Main St., known for drug activity and the occasional overdose emergency, was shut down by the city Codes Enforcement Department in March over numerous health and safety violations, and the residents were forced to move out.
Foster said Thursday that the previous owner, Cal Patel, had taken the property back from the most-recent owner, Jai Patel, after Jai Patel had determined that repairs and renovations to bring the motel back up to code would be more expensive than it would be worth.
“The cost of the work was just going to be too high, so he gave it back to the previous owner,” Foster said. “He is going to try to sell the [vacant lot] to someone who might want to develop it. If he can’t find a buyer, he said he might look at building a hotel there again.”
On the first day of the demolition, Wednesday (May 17), there were piles of furniture and old mattresses stacked up in the parking lot, and workers with heavy equipment were already starting to tear down the buildings.
The Blue Haven, which had picked up the nickname “Drug Haven” in recent years, had been empty since the city shut it down and put up police tape around it in early March.
About half of the rooms were occupied when the city inspected the motel on March 1, and the city helped some of the residents get help with finding other accommodations, Foster said. The last tenant was moved out on March 2.
Blue Haven’s shutdown came after the motel had failed to pay its city water and sewer bills on time for the second month in a row, Foster said at the time of the shutdown.
“We shut off their utilities in late January for nonpayment, but turned them back on when the bill was paid,” he said. “But we warned them that if it happened again, we would have to inspect the property before turning the water back on again.
“That’s what happened. We shut off the utilities on Feb. 28, and made the inspection on March 1. That’s when we posted the property as ‘not fit for human habitation,’ and forced the motel to close.”
The city’s new codes enforcement officer started to work that same day, and had the Blue Haven as his first case, Foster said.
Among the problems the city found during the inspection were no hot water in many of the rooms; non-working sinks and toilets, including blocked drains, in many of the rooms; and “animal feces on the floor in some of the rooms,” Foster said.
The city also called the state Fire Marshal’s Office to come in and make a fire-safety inspection because of inoperative fire alarms and other fire hazards, he said.
Rocky Top police, fire and ambulance services had been called to the motel numerous times for problems related to drug overdoses, and the regional drug task force had targeted drug activity at the motel, particularly since it changed ownership in 2019, Foster said.
According to Anderson County property records, Jai Vipulbhai Patel purchased the motel property on Oct. 1, 2019, for $440,000.
Foster said Jai Patel was also listed also as the manager of the business.
Beside two strip-style single-story buildings containing the hotel rooms, there also was a white frame house at the front of the property that served as the office.
No one from the motel ownership or management could be reached for comment.
The motel had some “extremely high” water bills – up to $7,000 a month – for the past several months, Foster said, indicating that there were some water leaks.