Station's whites-only hotel razed

A former whites-only hotel that once epitomized the city's racial divide collapsed into a pile of brick rubble Sunday after city officials last week condemned the nearly 100-year-old building at Zack Street and Nebraska Avenue.

It took about four hours for a city contractor to raze the building.

Union Depot Hotel once was among about a dozen two-story buildings along Zack Street that housed shops and trade services, and catered to train passengers arriving at Union Station. It was among the last of those commercial buildings, and the hotel had been vacant and boarded up for years before workers demolished it.

During segregation many whites arriving at Union Station would check into the hotel; blacks would walk farther west on Zack Street to the Jackson House, a boarding house that hosted entertainers including Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and James Brown.

A routine aerial check of city buildings this month revealed a "catastrophic" roof collapse at the 1912 two-story Union Depot Hotel. The hotel's owners, Tampa Union Station LLC, had amassed about $362,000 in code enforcement fines, levied since 2009, at $1,000 a day.

"It was an imminent public safety issue," said Jake Slater, the city's code enforcement director.

The hotel was named to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2001 in part to make tax credits available for future rehabilitation projects.

In 2006 Boca Raton-based Monacle proposed two condominium towers and shops at the intersection as well as a six-story parking garage. The project included parcels owned by Union Station Tampa including the hotel property and a former bar and lounge on the opposite side of Zack Street.

Accardi Properties Inc. bought the lounge from Union Station Tampa, county records show.

The project never materialized and the former hotel property is in foreclosure with Fifth/Third Bank.

Code issues have been a recurring problem since 2002. "They just showed little interest in trying to alleviate the code conditions," said Dennis Fernandez, the city's historic preservation manager.

Owners generally took care of overgrowth and debris after being cited but did little else, said Slater.

Last week Fernandez presented Tampa City Council with evidence of the hotel's long history of neglect, which included the unrepaired roof cave-in.

"There was no type of repairs or work done on the roof," Slater said.

Fernandez said the owners consented to the city hiring a demolition contractor to tear down the building. Slater said the city would put a lien on the property to recover about $17,000 in demolition costs.