Legal fight continues over fate of former Elyria Days Inn

ELYRIA — The legal fight over the former Days Inn property in northern Elyria continues as the building's owner has appealed the appointment of a receiver, while the receiver has filed motions accusing the owner of undermining his work. These more recent filings are just the latest in a push by the city to have the nuisance property remediated after years of sitting vacant and deteriorating. After the city took Suite Living and its owner Shahid Shaikh to court to have the dilapidated building declared a nuisance, the company agreed to enter into a stipulated judgment entry with the city on Jan. 5. Under the agreement, the company was given numerous deadlines, with the longest being 120 days, to take certain steps to remediate the property to the city's satisfaction. As part of the judgment entry, if the remediation deadlines were not met the city could make a motion to have control of the property handed over to attorney Christopher Mulvaney as receiver. Suite Living also agreed in the judgment entry that the property was a nuisance. A receiver takes on the ownership responsibilities of a project and agrees to carry out the needed remediation, but without actually stripping the current owner of their legal ownership. Four months after the agreement was signed, the city said that Suite Living had fallen well short of the deadlines and terms of the judgment entry, and moved to appoint Mulvaney. On April 15, Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Giovanna Bremke accepted the motion and handed down an order appointing Mulvaney. In August, Suite Living's attorney Logan Trombley, of Akron law firm Warner Mendenhall, filed an appeal to the 9th District Court of Appeals arguing that Mulvaney had not met the requirements to be named receiver. In the appeal, Trombley argued that Bremke erred in granting the city's motion to appoint a receiver because Mulvaney had not first provided a "viable financial and construction plan for the rehabilitation of Appellant's building." Trombley said in the appeal that state law required that Mulvaney present such a plan before he could be the receiver. He also argued that Mulvaney's appointment should be overturned because he is an attorney, not a land bank or financial institution that Trombley said are the intended receivers of a nuisance property under Ohio law. The appeal also alleges that the vandalism and break-ins that led to the building becoming so dilapidated occurred only after the city issued a one-year closing order against the building after it was purchased by Suite Living. City officials have said the deterioration of the site long predates that order. Elyria Assistant Law Director Erik Breunig filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, arguing that Suite Living had waived any right to appeal the stipulated judgment entry when it signed the agreement. Breunig argued that while Suite Living was technically only appealing the court order, that order was clearly an effective part of the judgment entry because it was a part of the process laid out in the agreement. Mulvaney was also named specifically as the prospective receiver in the judgment entry. "Suite Living's attempt to appeal the order is nothing more than an end run around the stipulated judgment entry in which it agreed not to file an appeal regarding the stipulated judgement entry," Breunig wrote in the motion. "Having clearly expressed its intention to waive its appeal rights, this attempted appeal is without merit." Judge Scot Stevenson denied the city's motion to dismiss, and the appeal is set to go to court for oral arguments on Nov. 20, Elyria Law Director Amanda Deery said. Deery said that the appeal is just one of a number of ways in which Suite Living has made it difficult for Mulvaney to do his duty as the receiver. "The receiver has filed a motion for instruction with the Common Pleas Court, essentially laying out that the property owner has filed a bunch of things which is hindering the receivers ability to abate the nuisance, as he was appointed to do," Deery said. One such instance which Deery pointed to was the fact that Suite Living was working to have the Days Inn property added to the National Register of Historic Places after Mulvaney had taken over as receiver. Mulvaney filed motions in court seeking to stop those actions, arguing that as receiver it was his duty to act as the owner of the property, and Suite Living had no authority to work with the Ohio History Connection. Deery said the motions in court were not acted upon, but the History Connection and Suite Living LLC agreed to suspend any action on the request until the end of the year. The city is still monitoring the activity at the Days Inn, and at a City Council meeting earlier this month both Fire Chief Joe Pronesti and Police Chief James Welsh said their departments still regularly had to answer calls at the hotel, often from people who had broken in and were living there. "We filled our brief and response to the property owner's appeal and hopefully once we have a resolution in that we should ideally see some movement (on remediation)," Deery said. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.