Edmond City Council declares OYO as a public nuisance property.

Image
  • Edmond City Council
    Edmond City Council
Body

The Edmond City Council Monday declared the OYO Hotel Edmond located at 1300 East Ayers, as a public nuisance property, and directed the property owner to complete specific actions by the March 11 City Council meeting.

Since 2014, Building and Fire Code Services, Code Enforcement, Edmond Fire Department, and Edmond Police Department have received numerous calls and complaints related to the property.

The Council ordered the property owners Edmond Medical Complex LLC, operated by Dr. Rajesh Narula and his wife to come into compliance with the following:

 By Friday, March 1, the property owner must hire CLEET-certified security to be on site 24-hours a day.

 The property owner must install security cameras to operate 24-hours a day.

 The property owner must come into compliance with all provisions of the Edmond Municipal code.

 The property owner must obtain a valid elevator certificate from the state Department of Labor.

 Until additional action is taken by Council, there can be no new tenants or occupants.

 Once completed, the property owner must provide a copy of the contract with the new operating group to the City.

The City Council has the authority to determine whether a public nuisance does in fact exist. If the City Council determines that a public nuisance does exist, it must advise the property owners of the manner and time frame for abatement of the public nuisance.

“It hasn't gotten better than what was told to us a year ago. We're right back here with the same issues. That is the concern that we have this evening,” said Mayor Darrell Davis. “I would like for us to go back to the rigidity that we had in the beginning, that we have a checklist that we look at so we can all be on the same sheet of paper because there's been violations in the past year. There's just been too many. We need to clean it up and we need to clean it up as fast as possible.”

Danny Shadid, attorney for the property owners, said the owners have continued to invest financially in their property.

“Dr. Narula and his wife acquired a little over $2.4 million in private financing to help upgrade the property. That's a lot of money,” Shadid said. “They have put out $100,000 on the elevator, about $100,000 on water tanks, hot water tanks and everything that is associated with it, about $10,000 on the sprinkling systems. This is all in the last four or five months roughly. They have refurbished all of the rooms and spent about $200,000 there. That's a lot of investment in this building. They didn't do that because they wanted this to be a nuisance.”

Police Chief JD Younger told the council that from Dec. 1, 2023, to Feb. 15, 2024, Edmond Police responded to  62 calls at that property.

"We had 38 calls for service that would range from suspicious activity to theft or other crimes but calls in which the police were notified or the police became aware of an incident at the property we need to respond to," he said. "In addition to those 38 incidents, we had 24 additional proactive patrols, which in nature could be a community of policing contact, could be just a special detail where you went there just to provide a presence in the area."

Sign up for the Free Weekly newsletter

* indicates required