Hotel issue needs answers

If the situation involving the American Hotel on East Main Street, Freehold Borough, wasn’t so pathetic, it might be comical. But there is absolutely nothing funny about a historic landmark being left to rot away — essentially demolition by neglect — in the middle of the most visible block in the borough.

One might ask how the American Hotel survived for more than a century — most recently as one of the area’s best known banquet facilities — and then, following its sale a few years ago, appeared to become doomed to failure.

The building has been closed for more than a year, deemed by borough officials to be in violation of fire codes. The situation had obviously reached the point at which borough officials determined it was no longer safe to permit people to occupy the building.

Meanwhile, the organization that bought the hotel — Hoti Inc. — seems to be a curious amalgam of individuals who, according to published reports, wheel and deal liquor licenses, mortgages and loans in an attempt to stay solvent and maintain control of this asset. The only thing they have managed to do is shutter the building and bring it to the brink of disaster.

Were it not for the quick response of the members of the Freehold Fire Department and other area fire companies who responded to a fire that broke out in the hotel on Feb. 17, much more than the American Hotel may have gone up in flames. The hotel is attached on the east side to a building that includes businesses and apartments. On the west side, a 5-foot-wide alley is all that separates the hotel from the Court Jester.

Given the unpredictable ways that a fire can evolve, it would not have been a stretch to imagine this entire side of East Main Street going up in flames. That would have been a disaster for the borough.

Rumors have been circulating around town for months that people have been heard in the American Hotel, possibly doing some type of work. One published report quoted the county prosecutor as saying the fire was started by squatters. At this point we do not know who started the fire two weeks ago.

A frank discussion about the future of the American Hotel needs to take place immediately. The owners must be called on the carpet to a meeting with the borough’s elected officials and repre-sentatives of the Freehold Center Partnership.

The borough has come too far in the past 15 years as a destination for visitors and a host for events to let it all go up in smoke because people in positions of authority ignored the signs — unpaid taxes, mysterious fires, incomplete plans for building improvements — and failed to ask questions.