Bellevue Hotel on Eighth Street in Ocean City will need to be repaired or face demolition after inspectors found it structurally unsafe on Monday.
The 99-room building dates to 1908 but it has been closed for nearly a year. On Sunday, local police and firefighters found a large volume of water sitting on the roof, stressing the structure, that had to be pumped off.
City code-enforcement officials and the city engineer inspected the property Monday and issued the owner a notice that it must be repaired.
If the building is not deemed structurally satisfactory, there is a process by which the construction official can order the property fully or partially demolished, although no determination has been made.
The hotel is assessed at $2.2 million. The city has been planning to convert the structure into age-restricted rental units using affordable housing trust-fund money.
Lee Procida
