Success Story : Officials Cite Hotel’s Turnaround in City’s War on Drugs

In Los Angeles’ war against drugs, there are some success stories. Take the Adams Garden Hotel in the Mid-City area.

Back in 1985, police were constantly at the 35-unit hotel in the 4900 block of West Adams Boulevard, trying to stem a parade of drug pushers and prostitutes. In a nine-month period, police arrested more than 25 people for various offenses and broke up “rock house” operations in two of the rooms.

Fed up with the situation there, City Atty. James K. Hahn’s office used a seldom-noticed state narcotics abatement law to shut down the hotel. Three months later, a new operator began requiring identification and room registration and spent $150,000 on improvements that authorities credit with forcing the hookers, pimps and drug traffickers to move elsewhere.

Hahn and Mayor Tom Bradley called a news conference on Wednesday at the Adams Garden Hotel to not only announce the pending formation of a special drug abatement unit in the city attorney’s office but also to brag about the eradication of illegal activities at the hotel.

“This is an example of the kind of success story we need,” Hahn said.

At the heart of the success, Hahn and Bradley said, are Hugh S. L. Hsieh, a 57-year-old immigrant from Taiwan who took over the hotel after authorities closed it in December, 1985, and his wife, Elsie, who manages it.

Hsieh, who had managed five major hotels in Taiwan, was friendly with the Adams Garden’s previous owner, Chun Lu, at the time when authorities were after him to deal with crime at the hotel. “I was helping him, going down to talk to the police,” Hsieh said Wednesday.

Hsieh holds his friend blameless for past brushes with police, pointing out that he leased the hotel to two other people who were managing it at the time of the closure. Lu could not be reached for comment.

Decide to Make Offer

When it closed, Hsieh and his wife--who have operated a hotel in San Diego and two others in Texas since arriving in this country in 1979--decided to offer close to $500,000 to buy the Adams Garden.

The couple worked closely with Southwest Division police officers when the hotel, equipped with TV cameras, 24-hour security guards and other safety measures, reopened in March, 1986, authorities said. At first, most of the hotel’s rooms were vacant when the dope dealers and prostitutes were turned away.

“I tell some people that we don’t want their business,” Hsieh said. “We want only good business. We want to be friends to everybody in the community. We want no problems.”

These days, an occupancy rate of almost 80%, with rooms going for $25 to $27 a night, has put the hotel into the black since the first of the year, Hsieh said.

Hsieh got so carried away during the news conference--he boasted that he might open a chain of small hotels and motels in Los Angeles--that Hahn and the mayor could barely suppress grins.

With Bradley’s blessing, Hahn said that $150,000 will be included in the proposed 1988-89 municipal budget for the five-member abatement unit, which will include two attorneys. Since 1985, one deputy city attorney has worked part time on using the 1971 state Controlled Substances Abatement Act to shut down hotels, motels, private residences and other buildings where major drug trafficking takes place.

In January, for example, the law was used to shut down a Skid Row hotel where police said drug trafficking netted dealers between $6,000 and $10,000 a day.

Authorities have identified more than 600 places in the city, many of them controlled by street gangs, that will be targeted by the new abatement unit. Hahn estimated that as many as 200 of them may be targeted in the special unit’s first year of operation.

When the news conference was over, a sign painted on a hotel wall that had been blocked by the participants came into clear view. It reads: “Guard on Duty. Welcome to Stay With Us. No Drugs or Prostitution.”