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Wait’s manager Emily Simpson and husband Doug Modig at the motel on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 11.
EVERETT — The potential future owners of the Waits Motel were stunned by the city's plan to condemn, acquire and demolish the site at 1301 Lombard Ave. along north Broadway. Unless there's a reversal, a City Council vote scheduled for Aug. 2 would formalize the plan into motion.
Outspoken neighbors against the motel say it should have been shuttered long ago.
Yes, the motel's reputation as a crime center precedes itself.
But the motel's manager explained that since she arrived in March she's been making big strides in turning it around, from pushing out drug abusers to rehabilitating the rooms. Her supporters say the same.
Last week, Mayor Cassie Franklin introduced the resolution asking council to agree with pursuing the condemnation of the Waits using eminent domain. It got a 7-0 vote in favor.
The city’s overall goal on condemnation would be to uacquire the property, raze the site and then seek to resell the land to developers that would build a housing development, the city said in a press release.
In a July 5 affidavit, the police department outlined crime at the Waits has been bad over the past year. There were 236 police calls in a 16-month span to the 24-room property. Several were for illegal drug activity, plus a few violent crimes and drug overdoses.
Statistics the Police Department presented in an affidavit to condemn show crime activity rapidly decreased starting in March. That’s when the new manager moved in.
“I think there’s some wariness” on the Waits, “but I can vouch that I have it under control,” manager Emily Simpson said.
Simpson became the live-in manager in March. She works for a security company which the Waits’ owner arranged with to place Simpson as motel manager in a room-and-board deal.
Since then, she used no-trespassing laws to the hilt to ward off drug buyers, she said, and trespassed out a squatter who dealt drugs.
Four rooms were contaminated with fentanyl. “I was the one who called that in,” Simpson said. The result got more drug abusers out.
Simpson said a bioremediation company cleaned the rooms up. They were waiting for a documented all-clear.
The city is using a condemnation tool in state law which lets it declare the property as a neighborhood blight that endangers public safety. The Waits met two of the three criteria, Franklin wrote.
At the meeting, Council President Brenda Stonecipher said activity the Waits generated public concerns over her near-20 years on council but the city never had uniform political will to close the motel until now.
City spokeswoman Simone Tarver declined specific media questions about the Waits, such as why the timing of the condemnation is happening now, saying after the council meeting that the city has no comments beyond what the city has already made public.
Elected City Councilmembers have been asked to not comment to the press about the Waits, according to one.
Neighbors addressed council that they are tired of crime affecting their lives which they tie to the motel’s guests. People have used drugs in the alley, left trash, broken into homes and made them feel unsafe, neighbors said. One reported a homeless encampment operated behind the motel all last summer 2022.
Motel owner Medhat Said said publicly he is sorry, and said things have changed. His attorney said condemning and acquiring the motel isn’t the best use of city funds.
“If nothing else, consider its recent history,” attorney Etan Lee told City Council.
Neighbors expressed skepticism. “We do not buy the PR campaign” about a turnaround, one told the council.
There were 11 rooms occupied at the Waits Motel as of Tuesday, July 11. Six of the rooms have long-term hotel guests. A few are elderly. It’s not clear where they would go if they had to leave.
Carla, a motel resident for the past 6.5 years who didn’t want her last name printed, said to force out the long-term elderly couples in the motel will make them homeless, and homelessness “will kill them,” Carla said.
City leaders aren’t considering the clean-up progress Simpson is doing, Carla said.
Simpson was blindsided.
She and her husband were working to buy the owner out, and said they had a mutual agreement for the purchase.
Their business plan has been to rebrand and renovate the Waits as the Rain Haven Motel to be the first Native American-owned hotel in Everett. (Simpson is Tsimshian, and her husband is Tsimshian and Haida.)
“I just want a chance,” Simpson said prior to the council vote. “I deserve a chance.”
* Correction: The photo caption stated the photo was taken June 11. It was taken July 11. The Tribune regrets the error.
