By Michael Bushnell

Northeast News

Kansas City Fire crews again responded to the abandoned Park Place hotel at 1601 Universal,  just after 11 p.m. on March 29. The 2 alarm blaze broke out on the 5th or 6th floor of the hulking structure, and is the latest in a string of fires at the old hotel that originally opened as The Breckenridge in the mid 1970s.

Part of the hotel was demolished earlier this winter after a fire in the ballroom area made the structure unsafe. The city recently issued a contract for demolition on the building and will ultimately bill the owner of the property if that person or company can be located. Transients are believed to be the cause of the blaze. In addition to the rash of fires, a man fell to his death in an elevator shaft at the vacant hotel last winter.

On Thursday, March 29, the KCMO City Council authorized the Director of the City’s Neighborhoods and Housing Services department to enter into an $838,200 contract with Industrial Salvage and Wrecking for the demolition of the vacant hotel. The ordinance was given an accelerated effective date.

This conflagration was one of three overnight fires in Northeast that kept fire crews hopping. Residential fires in the 3700 block of Garner and the 800 block of Lewis Avenue joined the hotel fire to keep Station 23’s B Shift out of the station house most of the night. No injuries were reported in any of the three fires.