Around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, emergency crews were called to the 19th-century structure as flames shot out of the roof and windows within five minutes of it being reported.
“We got a great response from our emergency crews,” Bucheit said. “Fire department, police department were on the scene very quickly.”
Mutual aid assistance came from the Fairfield, Fairfield Twp., Liberty Twp. and Ross Twp. fire departments.
It took a couple of hours to get the fire knocked down, and an emergency demolition crew came in around 6:40 p.m. Wednesday to start razing what was left standing of the building.
There were no reports of casualties, Bucheit said.
Flames and black smoke could be seen from all four stories of the building, and heat could be felt from across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The odor of the fire could still be detected in parts of downtown Hamilton and the city’s North End Thursday morning.
About a half-hour into the incident, Scrimizzi said crews were fighting the fire defensively, and the top floor and roof had already collapsed.
“We had a lot of crews here and putting out a lot of water. We wanted to get that fire knocked down and protect any adjacent buildings,” said Bucheit, adding while there was a drop in water pressure at the hydrants, they put a call into the city’s water plant to increase the pressure to help firefighters.
The city of Hamilton said on social media that there were power outages around the area of the fire as they shut down circuits for safety reasons.
The city of Hamilton purchased the 8.3-acre former Beckett Paper Company site for $1.5 million in 2021. At that time, a development agreement was being considered to turn the paper mill building on the northern end of the site into a mixed-use development that included retail and apartments.
While that original deal is no longer being considered, the city is now working with a new potential developer for the site. A non-binding letter of intent was signed this week for what could lead to a $100 million development that could be either market-rate apartments or a mixed-use project.
The building that caught fire was on the southern part of the property and more than likely would have been torn down for any project. The Beckett Paper Company used this building primarily for warehousing and storage of paper. It’s also believed there were offices in this building.
The now-destroyed building was constructed in the 1880s for the J.F. Bender & Brothers Company, a then-prominent construction company, according to Brad Spurlock, manager at the Smith Library of Regional History with Lane Public Libraries.
Cullen & Vaughn, another construction company, owned and operated the building in the mid-1910s. It was sold in 1916 to F.K. Vaughn Construction Company, Spurlock said. F.K. Vaughn owned the building until 1932, when the Beckett Paper Company purchased it. The Beckett plant, which was owned by Mohawk Paper at the time, closed in 2012.
J.W. Carr and Son Flour Mill operated at that site until its building burned down in 1882.
The cause of the fire may be difficult to determine, Scrimizzi and Bucheit said.
“We’ll know more when the smoke clears” and the investigation can begin, Scrimizzi said.
