As students remain in hotel rooms, arts-dorm owners face multiple L&I violations

More than 550 students from the Art Institute of Philadelphia remain out of their dorm rooms in an old Center City building today while its owners and city inspectors meet to go over alleged safety-code violations, some serious.

The city's Department of Licenses and Inspections ordered owners of the 17-story Avenue of the Arts building to fix, among other problems, an inoperable fire-alarm system and an improperly maintained emergency/ standby-power system.

Some 250 students from the Art Institute were evacuated from the building, at Broad and Chestnut streets, about 4:30 a.m. Monday when a student's carbon-monoxide detector went off.

Fire Department personnel later took carbon monoxide readings and found a "relatively high" carbon monoxide reading of 300 parts per million in the building's basement, according to Fire Capt. Richard Davison. More than 35 parts per million is considered dangerous, he said.

An investigation of the source of the leak was being conducted.

The evacuees, along with 300 other Art Institute students who were not in the building when the evacuation took place, are being housed in local hotels, said Carise Mitch, communications director for the Institute.

She said it was uncertain when they would be allowed to return to their dorm. The school teaches media arts and other subjects, including culinary management.

Mitch identified the owners as Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., of New York. Maura Kennedy, an L&I spokeswoman, identified the owners as AAC Management, and said an individual named Joe Houston also was a "principal" in the building.

After the evacuation, L&I issued a cease-operations order for the building and two restaurants housed there. The restaurants, Olive Garden and the Capital Grille, were permitted to reopen yesterday, Kennedy said.

Kennedy said officials from L&I, the city Office of Emergency Management and the building's owner would have a "walkthrough" today to assess what has been done and what still needs to be done to correct the L&I violations.

Afterward, she said, "we should be able to give people a better sense of how close they [the owners] are to compliance."

A L&I report dated Monday and setting a deadline of Feb. 10 for violations correction cited the following problems:

_ An inoperable fire-alarm system.

_ Inoperative emergency light ing.

_ Emergency/standby-power system not properly maintained.

_ Building employees untrained in fire-emergency procedures, including evacuation plans, which require a voice-message system.

_ Open junction boxes and open wiring splices in 17th-floor electrical room.

_ Water heaters in the mezzanine, and 14th through 16th floor boilers and rooftop boiler producing "unacceptable levels of carbon monoxide."