Norwood Inn Condemned and Hotel License Denied
The City Council considered five hotel licenses on March 24
The City of Roseville has denied the hotel license for the Norwood Inn & Suites and condemned the building, prohibiting occupancy.
At the March 24 city council meeting, a hearing was held for an appeal pertaining to the decision to condemn the Norwood Inn building. Later in the meeting, the city council also reviewed applications for five hotel licenses, including one for the Norwood Inn.
This is the first time Roseville has had the opportunity to enforce the new hotel license ordinance adopted in April 2024. The Minnesota Legislature passed a bill in 2023 allowing cities to adopt an ordinance requiring lodging establishments to have an approved license.
For at least a decade, Roseville Police have been trying to address concerns about a small number of hotels that have ongoing building and safety code issues as well as pervasive incidents of criminal conduct, such as human trafficking, robberies, disorderly conduct, assault, controlled substance abuse, and overdose deaths. Seventy-five percent of all police responses to Roseville hotels are to three hotels—Motel 6, Norwood Inn, and Key Inn— according to documents from a March 4, 2024 city council meeting.
Roseville adopted a repeat nuisance ordinance in 2021, which imposes fines for hotels that have more than 10 emergency service calls per month for police, fire, or code reasons (not including medical emergencies). Two of the hotels began working with the RPD on improving public safety at their properties. This reduced the number of calls, but the RPD continued to see criminal activity and building and fire code issues at all three hotels.
Roseville requests a change to state law
The city turned to state legislators to pass a law which would allow cities like Roseville to institute hotel license ordinances as a means to enforce minimum safety and code standards. It took a few years, but the bill was finally signed into law in 2023.
At a hearing on Feb. 16, 2023 for the bill—House File 626 authored by former Representative Jamie Becker-Finn— Roseville Police Chief Erika Scheider testified.
“The vast majority of hotels in Roseville are safe and well managed. Unfortunately, we do have a small number of hotels we continue to have problems with,” Scheider said at the hearing.
She described situations in which a hotel manager refused to call 911 when someone was having a medical emergency, which turned out to be an overdose and a hotel’s live-in staff member admitting to soliciting sexual services from a female and smoking methamphetamine in his room. That woman later reported being sexually assaulted. Scheider also testified about a long term customer at one of these hotels who claimed she was fined and evicted after she tried to call 911 to report a domestic situation.
In an interview with the Roseville Reader, Scheider said that without cooperation from hotel management, there is a limit to how much the city can do to make these hotels safer.
“We’ve got a really great relationship with our other hotels. They really want to keep their hotels safe. They don’t want human trafficking in their hotels. They don’t want problems. They want their guests to have a really safe experience,” Scheider said.
The Norwood Inn in particular has not cooperated with RPD’s efforts to improve safety. “Quite frankly, they’ll do the minimum,” Scheider said.
As of April 2024, the city now requires hotels to apply for and annually renew a license to operate. The reasons a license could be denied are outlined in the ordinance, which includes such things as building and health code violations, repeat nuisance calls for service, and any person involved in day-to-day operations of the hotel with one or more criminal convictions related to the hotel. Read the ordinance and requirements for a license in full here.
The Norwood Inn Building Inspection History
The Norwood Inn, owned by Percy Pooniwala, is located at 2401 Prior Ave, northeast of the Highway 36 and Interstate 35W interchange. The motel has 179 guest rooms, an indoor swimming pool, laundry, and a business center.
On March 3, 2024 the Roseville Fire Department responded to a report of smoke and flames coming from a ventilation fan of a guest room, which spread to the third floor. No injuries were reported, but several rooms sustained smoke and water damage.
As part of the hotel license application process, the Norwood Inn was thoroughly inspected in October 2024 to ensure it was up to code. The hotel failed the inspection due to numerous code violations.
According to the Oct. 18 inspection report, these building violations included windows that couldn’t open or didn’t latch, phones that didn’t work or were missing, a plumbing vent venting sewer gas into the structure, damaged electrical outlets, and doors that couldn’t close or latch, among other items in disrepair. Fire code violations included multiple rusty or corroded sprinkler heads, expired fire extinguishers, holes in fire-rated walls and ceilings, missing carbon monoxide detectors, and other damaged or missing fire-prevention items. Damage from the March fire had not yet been adequately repaired.
The Norwood Inn was given a list of repairs to be made over the course of five, ten, and thirty days.
Staff returned at the request of Ramsey County on Jan. 24, 2025 after being notified that multiple units were damaged when a water pipe burst.
City staff returned again on March 3 and found that no meaningful progress had been made to correct the items outlined in the October inspection report. They also found that the repairs made to the pipes appeared to be conducted without required permits or inspections. Some of the violations were related to damage from the March 2024 fire, including a hole from a guest room into the attic, which had not been addressed a year later. Twenty-one units were occupied and no access was provided for inspection.
The Roseville Building Official and Roseville Fire Marshal determined the building was unsafe and submitted a notice of condemnation and prohibited occupancy to the Norwood Inn on March 18, 2025. The next day, the owner of the hotel submitted an application for appeal. City staff said the form was submitted without supporting documentation to demonstrate why the condemnation act was unlawful.
On the afternoon of March 24 and again at the city council meeting the same day, Pooniwala submitted paperwork indicating which repairs had been made and other arguments for appeal. The Roseville Reader did not get a chance to review these documents.
At this meeting, Dave Englund, building official, and Janice Gundlach, community development director, presented a history of the Norwood Inn’s building inspections and why they recommended the Board of Adjustments and Appeals (comprised of all five city council members) uphold the condemnation order.
At the meeting, Pooniwala pled his case to the board, requesting “a few more days” to make repairs, explaining that his general manager had not understood the inspection report and claimed that he—the owner—had been traveling in India for months and said he’d been recovering from cancer.
“People go in and out of this hotel all the time. Check in and check out 70 to 80 people. There is continuous damage. We do our best to keep up,” Pooniwala said.
The repairs that had been made so far had been done without the required permits or appropriately licensed contractors, Englund said at the meeting.
“It was actually heartbreaking to see how much money they’ve put into work that’s been improperly done. They’re putting good money into bad work. If they had actually applied for permits it would have been a better use of their funds,” Gundlach said at the meeting.
The Board unanimously upheld the Building Official’s decision to condemn the building. Then the city council subsequently denied the hotel license. A denial of a hotel license is effective for 12 months.
“We cannot survive without a hotel license. I don’t think we have endured a right opportunity to explain everything,” Pooniwala said at the meeting, during which he spoke without a time limit in support of his appeal.
Pooniwala is the owner of several hotels throughout the Twin Cities. He also owned the Norwood Inn in Burnsville, which was shut down in 2018 by the Minnesota Department of Health.
“Part of what the city has a responsibility for is the safety of the people who come here. Fires going up through the roof and into the attic could bring the building down. I think we’ve been more than patient waiting a year for that repair,” Councilmember Wayne Groff said at the meeting.
Per the original condemnation notice, guests and staff of the Norwood Inn were required to vacate the building by 4:30 p.m. on Monday, March 24.
Roseville’s Community Action Team, and the RPD’s social workers and housing navigator are ready to assist any long-term guests at the Norwood Inn who may need help accessing services. A list of Ramsey County services and phone numbers to call were also provided to the Norwood Inn.
“We want to be sure that people have a safe place to go,” Scheider told the Roseville Reader.
Hotel License Approvals
During the same city council meeting, hotel license applications were considered for the Double Tree, Avid Hotel, Key Inn, and Motel 6. All were approved, with some specific conditions placed on Motel 6 to repair structural problems on the second and third stories. The Motel 6 must limit occupancy to the ground floor and make all necessary repairs by May 30 or action will be taken against the license.
Chief Scheider told the Roseville Reader that after many years of dealing with public safety and code concerns at these hotels, that it’s great to finally see some progress in addressing the issues.
“At the end of the day, we want people who come to stay in our city to be safe,” Scheider said.