WILLIMANTIC - Residents of one of Main Street's most well-known buildings say they're staying - downtown advisory committee be damned.

A little more than a week ago, the committee recommended in its final report that residents of the Hotel Hooker - which after being known as the Seth Chauncey Hotel, is now called Windham House - should be moved to housing somewhere else.

The move would clear the way for the private development of the hotel, the committee noted.

"They stated they wanted to use it for residential purposes," hotel resident Michael Bolton said this week. "Well, it is."

Bolton said Common Ground, the New York non-profit organization currently managing the hotel, intends to renovate the hotel with businesses on the first floor and a rear entrance to the apartments above.

Bolton, a 2004 state representative candidate who ran on the Working Families Party ticket, said the rear entry is an unnecessary concession to those in town who object to the people living at the hotel.

"We're not bad people," Bolton said. "The committee ought to do a little more digging. They want Willimantic to be a tourist place, but it doesn't have any entertainment, and the arts doesn't bring any money."

What the city needs, he said, is more retail stores.

The committee "ought to think about reality; they're dreaming. It would be great to have a great arts community, but it's not practical," Bolton said.

He said Willimantic would be more suited to an Army/Navy store, and a "modern, young people's fashion store."

"People would come from both universities to shop there," he said.

"There's no need to worry about the fact that Windham House has people living in it. What are they worrying about us for?" Bolton asked. "Other buildings on Main Street have questionable people living in them. A lot of the ideas against us are based on ignorance."

Hotel resident Deborah Brooke agreed. "I don't see a problem with staying where we are," she said.

Like Bolton, she said those who deride the hotel, its residents and management haven't taken the time to learn anything about them.