Authorities said they don't know what caused the fire at the three-story building at 199 South St. Clair, a warehouse for J.J. Supply, Inc. “It's going to be very difficult because of the massive damage,” fire investigator Mike Sbrocchi said. “Right now, everything looks to me as accidental.”
He said the blaze probably began in the midsection of the second floor and caused about $1 million damage to the building and its contents.
Mark Kosmider, president of J.J. Supply, Inc., said the structure housed three of the company's five trucks and more than 50 percent of its inventory, which included industrial plumbing equipment and pipe fittings.
The building was not heated, so it did not have an activated sprinkler system, Mr. Kosmider said.
Firefighters yesterday continued spraying water on some hotspots in the smoking rubble made up mostly of piles of bricks, and two-foot thick splintered structural timbers. Fire truck tires tracked black char and cinders from Clayton to Summit streets.
The company, a distributor of pipes, valves, and fittings, maintains offices across the street from the destroyed warehouse. Company officials will meet today to regroup.
“It's just mentally devastating,” Mr. Kosmider said. “Business-wise, it's almost business as usual.”
“This is definitely a setback, but it's a minor setback,” said Mark Wolfe, a company vice president. “The inventory in that building is going to be hard to replace, but we will persevere.”
The building stood in one of the city's oldest industrial districts, on a site where canal boats once maneuvered up Swan Creek to tie up at warehouse water gates.
In 1886 a tobacconist, boardinghouse, bookbinder, and “Voute's Odorless Excavating” outhouse cleaning service were in the immediate vicinity.
Real estate records trace the burned building to 1900; it was a nondescript, vaguely Italianate timber-frame structure clad in buff brick. In the 1920s and 1930s, it housed trucking and warehouse companies; in 1954, two tool companies were listed there.
The two-alarm fire that destroyed the 65,000-square-foot structure was reported at 10 p.m.
At its peak, flames shot at least 50 feet through the roof. No one was hurt.
Fire-damaged utility poles, wires, and other equipment left 15 neighborhood businesses without power yesterday. Toledo Edison officials said they hoped to restore power by today.
Kathy Steingraber, executive director of the Warehouse District Association, called the loss of the building depressing.
“It immediately changes the character of the neighborhood,” she said. “What we hope to happen is that someone will rebuild on that spot.”
If the warehouse is not rebuilt, perhaps the lot bordering Swan Creek could be used as green space, she said.
First Published December 24, 2001, 12:08 p.m.
