DOWNTOWN : Hotel Owner Fined, Must Fix Building

For the second time in five years, the owner of a Skid Row hotel again pleaded no contest to slum charges and was ordered to pay $11,711 in fines, spend 200 hours in community service and repair the building by May 26.

If Chung Chuan Wang fails to make the repairs at the Modoc Hotel by the deadline, he must spend 30 days under house arrest at the hotel at 819 S. Towne Ave.

Los Angeles Municipal Judge Barry Taylor also placed Wang and his company, the Chi Cha Corp., on three years’ probation after Wang pleaded no contest March 17 to 10 charges of fire, health and building and safety code violations.

The current charges stem from city Slum Housing Task Force inspections conducted on Oct. 21 and Nov. 1 at the two-story, 76-room brick hotel, which is across the street from 9th Street Elementary School.

Inspectors reportedly found exposed live electrical wires, defective heater vents, missing and inoperable smoke detectors, missing and broken windows and screens, vermin infestation, an open sewer, defective plumbing, trash and debris throughout the premises and damaged and deteriorated walls and ceilings.

Defense attorney Bernard Talmas contends that Wang has spent “a small fortune” fixing the building and said the tenants are to blame for many of the problems.

Wang was prosecuted by the city attorney’s housing enforcement unit in 1989 after inspectors found similar conditions at the Modoc during two visits that year. Wang pleaded no contest to 12 slum charges and was ordered to pay $13,138 in fines and to repair the building.

Wang made those repairs, but not before violating his probation by failing to meet the court-imposed deadline, prosecutors said. He was subsequently ordered to pay additional fines and perform 1,500 hours of community service.

The hotel has also been the source of prostitution and other crimes that prompted another unit of the city attorney’s office to file a red-light abatement lawsuit against Wang in June, 1992. In the two years before the lawsuit was filed, undercover vice officers from the Police Department’s Newton Division made 19 arrests for prostitution at the hotel and investigated a number of other crimes, including burglary, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.