Starting Tuesday, the Bergmann Hotel will be for sale.<\/p>\n
Breffni Place Properties, which owns the Bergmann and other properties in town, is selling the Bergmann — a historic Juneau building that was closed down in March of this year due to safety concerns — as well as two other nearby houses on Fourth Street.<\/p>\n
Those houses have been subject to police raids<\/a> in recent months, as neighbors have complained of what they believe to be rampant drug dealing and prostitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n Power of Attorney for the Barrett family Dave D’amato, along with Breffni Registered Agent Maureen Barrett-Smith, spoke to more than 15 gathered neighbors Sunday night to declare their intent to sell the properties.<\/p>\n D’amato spoke about past efforts to get help in running the Bergmann, saying that the low-income residents of that building were causing problems in the surrounding area. They worked with the Alaska Mental Health Trust at one point, D’amato said.<\/p>\n “This neighborhood is in crisis,” D’amato said in his pitch to the trust in an effort to get the organization to help out, “and this building is the epicenter of it.”<\/p>\n That partnership with the trust didn’t work out, D’amato said, and he and the property owners are now looking for a “civic-minded” organization to purchase the properties. He said there’s already been interest, and expects more to come when they’ve worked out a price for the properties and put them on the market.<\/p>\n D’amato, Barrett-Smith and a handful of others spent the weekend clearing out the buildings. D’amato said they’ve gathered around 6,000 pounds of “debris” and taken much of it to the dump. Most of that garbage is from the two properties on Fourth Street, he said. About 1,000 pounds of that total, he said, is from the Bergmann in the form of mattresses and other household items left behind.<\/p>\n “It looked like a hotel threw up in the yard, didn’t it?” D’amato said to the neighbors who noticed the trash on Sunday.<\/p>\n