DATE: Saturday, September 13, 1997          TAG: 9709130319

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   67 lines

JUDGE AGREES TO LET INN LACKING SPRINKLERS CHECK HOURLY FOR FIRES THE OWNER OF A SECOND HOTEL MUST RETURN TO CIRCUIT COURT ON MONDAY.

Two resort hotels went to court Friday over fire sprinkler violations, and the judge has agreed to let one stay open as long as employees check deficient first-floor rooms every hour for possible fires.

That arrangement was part of a settlement between the city and the Quality Inn at 22nd Street and the Oceanfront for failure to meet the Sept. 1 sprinkler retrofit deadline.

The Princess Anne Inn, which must return to court Monday, and the Quality Inn are the only hotels out of 33 Oceanfront inns targeted in January that didn't comply with the building code requiring the fire safety devices. The hotels have known for 7 1/2 years that the work needed to be done.

The Princess Anne's owner plans to raze his building and never began work to install sprinklers. The Quality Inn, however, lacks sprinklers in only eight of its 111 rooms.

Judge Alan E. Rosenblatt signed off on an agreement Friday allowing Quality Inn owner Norman Levine to remain open and to continue renting the eight ground-floor rooms until sprinkler installation work begins Sept. 29.

All but the first floor of the inn had been equipped with sprinklers in a major renovation in the late 1980s. Seven floors and a parking garage were added to the structure, which now stands at 13 floors. When it was completed, city fire officials told Levine that ground-floor sprinkler refitting was not necessary, Levine's lawyer, Steven G. Test, told Rosenblatt.

Until first-floor sprinklers are added, the agreement requires the Quality Inn to have a staff member available to make round-the-clock fire watches. This means that hotel employees must peek into every first-floor room, office and hallway on the hour to see that there are no fires in progress.

In addition, Quality Inn must advise ground-floor guests that the rooms are without sprinklers and allow them - without penalty - to cancel reservations if requested. Hotel management must designate the eight ground-floor rooms as non-smoking areas; equip each rental room with fire extinguishers and make sure that fresh batteries are installed in smoke detector alarms.

The agreement, reached in the judge's chamber, allows Quality Inn to rent its ground-floor rooms through the last weekend of the annual Neptune Festival.

Test said hotel management signed a contract with Worsham Sprinkler Co. of Portsmouth on Sept. 4 to refit the first floor with a fire retardant system, but work will not start until Sept. 29.

The legal fate of the Princess Anne may be far different.

A Circuit Court hearing Friday on the city's suit against the Princess Anne Inn, at 25th Street and Atlantic Avenue, was postponed until Monday at the request of lawyer Moody E. ``Sonny'' Stallings Jr.

Stallings said he had been retained by hotel owner Dawson Sterling the day before and was not prepared to argue the case.

Sterling said he had not obtained a permit to retrofit his hotel with sprinklers because the 35-year-old property is due to be razed and replaced with a new inn. To meet the state-mandated Sept. 1 deadline, Sterling said he would have had to spend $10,000 to $60,000 to refit the 60-room Oceanfront hotel, only to turn around and demolish it to make room for a new structure.

A city fire marshal made an initial inspection Sept. 2 and issued notices of violation to nearly a dozen resort hotels and motels deemed to be in breach of a 1990 state law requiring the fire safety devices to be installed in hotels three stories high and above.

All 12 of those hotels were given another week to comply. Last week, half of those had come into compliance, according to a second round of inspections.

That left the Quality Inn and Princess Anne Inn and four others.

The other four inns cited last week since have complied or signed consent orders attesting to efforts to comply promptly, said Assistant City Attorney Vanessa Valldejuli. The city therefore decided to not file suit against them.

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