Final York Hotel tenant checks out

The last person living in Edmonton's notorious inner-city York Hotel has moved out.

The city shut down the 104th Avenue and 96th Street hotel in March for safety reasons.

Over a two-year period police, fire and emergency crews were called to the hotel and its in-house bar more than 1,200 times.  

Improper management practices turned the hotel bar into a "problem location" where steps weren't taken to curb and report criminal activity, the city's chief licensing officer, Randy Kirillo said last September.

In one instance, a person was stabbed in the bar, cleaned himself up and then continued drinking, Kirillo said.

Edmonton bought the hotel this year, and will use the property and its surrounding land for an urban revitalization initiative known as the Boyle Renaissance project.

The project, was unveiled in 2008, seeks to transform the rundown and sparsely populated area by building a recreation centre and erecting hundreds of housing units for homeless and at-risk Edmontonians.

15 residents

When York Hotel closed in March, 15 people were living inside. The city offered them help to find new places and paid their first month's rent.

Homeward Trust, a local organization that helps Edmontonians find new homes, assisted the residents.

Murray Soroka, director of Homeward Trust, told CBC News on Thursday that moving everyone wasn't easy.

He said some tenants didn't want to leave a place they had called home for a number of years.

"It always takes time to house people and the aspect of choice, building a trusting relationship that we weren't there just to evict them, always takes time, there's always challenges around timing," Soroka said.