On December 11, the Essex House on High Street in Holyoke partially collapsed. The former hotel was built in 1880, and for the past 20 years it has been out of use and falling apart– literally. Luckily, none were injured, but the building has been the source of headaches for many local business owners.

“It’s been happening for… maybe six months,” MD Salon owner Maria Ferrer says of falling bricks from the abandoned hotel in an April 2013 interview with The Republican.

She has had to temporarily move her salon to a new location on Cabot Street as she feared for her employees’ and clients’ well-being.

The partial collapse has also displaced nine Holyoke families living in apartments in which falling debris crashed through. The families are being aided by the Red Cross and are currently staying at the Homewood Suites.

The building has been designated as unsafe and dangerous by engineers, and has been a topic in numerous Holyoke City Council meetings. Councilors disagreed mainly on who should bear the brunt of costs, the liquidated former owner (Essex House LLC) or the city, who now owns the property. Ferrer commented in a September 2014 council meeting that public safety should be of the utmost concern, not “delinquent taxpayers that hold neighbors and business owners hostage”.

The council finally approved to borrow $1.5 million from the state this September, over a year after the 134 year-old hotel began tearing itself down. Its razing was slated to begin just days before the collapse. The block between Essex Street and Appleton Street has been shut down to traffic, adds Morton Haberman.

A not so happy holidays for many business owners and residents in Holyoke.