Dear editor: End the sideshow

Dear editor:

In repose, Majestic she is not. Friday, Feb. 27, marked one year since the Majestic Hotel burned and the ruins still sit untended and rotting on the downtown landscape. Someone has crossed the barriers and posted signs on the rubble attempting to embarrass the city into action: "Where is the leadership?", "Shame on Hot Springs" and "We're better than this." Apparently, we're not.

The story has been well documented in these pages: the history, the importance to the downtown area, the ownership and murky cleanup plan, the tourism angle, the competing interests, and the possibilities for the future. But the pile is still there.

City officials have met and talked and met some more. State and federal officials have inspected. Still, we wait.

The owner has been charged and processed through the legal system. The city board of directors has tabled the issue multiple times, while the health and public safety hazard remains.

I'm glad to see that The Sentinel-Record grew some editorial fortitude and called on the city board to act at its March meeting. But it's shameful that it had to come this far. Leaders, by definition, should be in front, setting the tone, not getting called out a year later for inaction.

I'm personally offended by what has happened with the Majestic. Sure, it was just an old raggedy hotel. Should have been torn down years ago. At least that would have been dignified.

But underneath the shabbiness, you could still feel the entity that deserved the name. I worked at the Arlington and the Majestic in the early 1990s. The Majestic was far past her prime even in those days, but the spirit was still there. She was like a kindly old lady who deserved a decent death. I remember walking the halls of the old section -- now a mound of bricks and scrap -- on overnight security shifts. It was empty at that point, theoretically going through a remodel, and if ever there was a haunted place, that was it. Midnight, no lights, see-your-breath cold, pipes clanking, dozens of smoke alarms ticking their dead battery beeps in a spooky cadence, stacks of wallpaper and carpet piled about. In one second-story guest room, there were hundreds of issues of The Sentinel-Record from the day the ground invasion began in the first Gulf War. But you could still feel the life of the place, waiting to be resuscitated. Not anymore.

Now, it's like some Barnumesque sideshow: someone dumped a whale carcass in the street and left it there to rot while everyone dances around blaming each other and refusing to do anything about it. I don't know what's happening behind the scenes of city government to address the problem. But I do know that if an average citizen's home or business burned and the rubble was abandoned, it would have been condemned and forcibly removed months ago and the tab handed to the owner.

Thanks to The Sentinel-Record for turning up the heat. Maybe it will help, maybe not. Shame certainly hasn't done anything. We don't have any.

John Howard

Hot Springs

Editorial on 03/04/2015

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