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The vacant Town Motel, located at 1708 W. Third St., was demolished on Wednesday, March 18. Property owner Rishi Mishra says he may build back.

The motel was forced to close in October 2018 after the Town of Farmville said the motel received multiple property maintenance and building code violations.

Between 25-30 residents who were living at the motel at the time were displaced due to the closure.

“With lots of building code violations, it would have been very expensive to renovate, and the property is in the flood zone,” Mishra said. “So, I decided to demolish it and probably build something better.”

According to documentation provided by the town in 2018, the motel had been determined as an unsafe structure, defined by the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code (USBC) as “dangerous to the health, safety and welfare of the occupants of the structure or the public.

In September 2018, Mishra was issued a letter signed by Town of Farmville Building Official Phillip Moore detailing several violations found at the motel.

In addition, three days later, another letter was delivered to Mishra stating that the water source from the motel was not connected with the town’s water supply.

Reported violations from the motel detailed in the letter included peeling paint, missing siding, missing or non-functioning smoke alarms, lack of gutters or drainage, evidence of extension cord use and multi-use outlets for rooms not intended for long-term stay, posing a potential fire hazard, several rooms where the bathtubs were used for storage, a refrigerator that was draining onto the floor, with spoiled content inside of the refrigerator and “roaches and insects crawling in and around the refrigerator,” and evidence of insect and rodent activity in one of the units.

Mishra said on Wednesday during the demolishing that it would be a while before anything would be built. “There is a lot of work still left to do, and dirt must be added to bring the property out to the flood zone,” Mishra said. “There’s a lot of things yet to finalize.”

To see more pictures of the demolition click here: https://farmvilleherald.smugmug.com/Town-Motel-demolished