HAMMOND | Law enforcement officers have notified 12 registered sex offenders they no longer can reside at the LaSalle Hotel on Hohman Avenue in downtown Hammond.
LaSalle owner Louis Karubas on Monday confirmed last Wednesday's visit to the hotel by Lake County Sheriff's Department Police Lt. Brian Marsh; Yvette Salinas, parole district supervisor with the Indiana Department of Correction; and parole officer John Larson.
But it was a nearby bike trail maintained by the Hammond Parks & Recreation Department -- not the close proximity of the city's proposed new charter school -- that law enforcement officers gave as their reason for ordering the sex offenders to vacate the hotel.
A re-measurement of the distance between the bike trail and the hotel had found the distance to be 780 feet. State law prohibits certain sex offenders from living or working within 1,000 feet of public parks and schools.
The city's proposed new charter school will be located less than 500 feet from the hotel. As The Times reported Monday, the hotel appeared on a housing referral list the Indiana Department of Correction distributed to sex offenders being released from prison.
Douglas Garrison, spokesman for the Department of Correction, said county police notified the state last Wednesday the hotel's distance from the bike path fell short of the 1,000-foot limit.
Garrison said county police had been alerted to the error through an anonymous telephone call, but sheriff's spokesman Michael Higgins said the discovery came about through an investigation Marsh conducted. The investigation was unrelated to last week's raid on unregistered sex offenders, Higgins said.
Hammond police had re-measured the distance between the park bike path and the hotel Sept. 23 at the request of county police, which led to the 12 men being told to move, Higgins said.
Though the DOC's Garrison said he had been told the men would be gone by this Saturday, Karubas said he asked everyone to prepare to leave sooner.
"I'm getting everyone out by Wednesday," Karubas said. "That's all I can say."
Karubas said he had never been contacted by city or school officials about there being any concerns about the hotel.
Since word spread recently of his accepting DOC parolees who had been charged with sex offenses, Karubas said he has received four offers to buy the hotel. He declined to identify the potential buyers. "I don't want to sell now," he said of the hotel he has operated for 40 years.
He questioned why the organizers of the charter school had never contacted him.
"I was never told anything about the charter school project ever or anything else for downtown," Karubas said.
Neither was Rick Sloan, owner of the Good Stuff Store, a gift and novelty shop next door to the hotel. Sloan confirmed his shop specializes in adult items commonly seen at bachelor and bachelorette parties.
The store, which also sells standard giftware such as music boxes and picture frames, has been operating at the site since 1935, Sloan said.
City consultant Tom Dabertin, the spokesman for the charter school project and a board member, said he had no personal knowledge of the hotel being found too close to park property, nor did he have knowledge of the adult material sold by Good Stuff.
He referred the matter to City Attorney Kristina Kantar, who did not respond to a telephone call from The Times.
