Tama Building owner Doug Wells thanks Burlington fire fighters, police

The Tama Building and Sutter Drug Store in the 1940s.

Des Moines architect Doug Wells, owner of Historic Tama LLC, has been pretty quiet about the devastating fire at the Tama Building that began on Aug. 4. The complex was just weeks away of opening in some fashion, with retail on the first floor and apartments above it. Wells was quoted in The Hawk Eye, saying “After working on the project so much and the length of time it has taken, the hundreds of dedicated construction workers who spent thousands of hours here, it’s just shocking to me. I’m devastated.” My heart goes out to him because with my family’s history of Sutter Drug so tied up in the Tama Building, it’s been a tough time for many of us.

Wells issued this press release on Aug. 10:

Our heartfelt thank-you to the City of Burlington Fire Department and
Police Department for their courageous efforts battling and extinguishing
the fire at the Tama Building on August 4-5, 2018. We hope the firemen,
who were injured, are making a full and rapid recovery. Shocked and
devastated to see this happen so close to the finish line, we were ready for
occupancy of this fully-restored historical building in September and
October 2018.

We are most appreciative of the ongoing efforts by numerous entities:
City of Burlington, Downtown Partners Inc, State of Iowa – Iowa Economic
Development Authority, and Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs – State
Historic Preservation Office.

We thank the many Burlington residents who had committed to
downtown residential living in the Tama. We thank Donna & Eric Renteria
and Mark Renteria (Olive Wine and the proposed Snake Alley Market) and
Greg Flietner (Big River Popcorn) for their ongoing loyalty to the project
and plans to move into the commercial spaces with their vibrant
community-based businesses.

With momentum, the design/construction team was anticipating
fulfillment of this project within weeks. Caleb Giesel, our determined
Burlington on-site manager, has been loyal, tenacious, and relentless to
get the job done.

Right now, we are pouring over several viable options with a focus on
rebuilding the Tama and C & E Buildings, which are such important
elements of the Burlington historical fabric and downtown revitalization.

It’s great to see Wells making this statement and thanking and acknowledging all the people involved in the Tama Building project and fire fighting.  Having spent my career in journalism, I know that the more he and other officials involved in the investigation can share information with the public, the better off everyone will be. Now is the time for openness, for giving periodic updates about the investigations into how the fire started, what options are being explored for the future for that complex, etc.

Given that the fire is a major setback for downtown redevelopment and is having a negative impact on existing businesses,  Wells and Burlington city officials need to pledge to keep the public updated as often as possible.

To read more about the fire investigation and its impact on downtown, click here to read the latest story from The Hawk Eye.

 

I’m committed to sharing the latest news about the Tama Building to keep readers up to date. If you don’t want to miss a post, you can receive posts quickly via email. Please scroll to the bottom of this web page and fill in your email address and submit it. I will not share your email address with others.

Untimely fire at Sutter Drug Store in Tama Building in 1939

I got a surprise Facebook message from Bill Ewinger in Burlington recently. He was in the same class at St. Paul’s as my older sister, Tracey, when we were growing up.

Bill told me that he had found a newspaper article about a fire that happened in the basement of Sutter Drug Co. on Oct. 9, 1939. I didn’t know about that fire, and Bill was kind enough to mail to me a copy of the article. (He came upon it when he and a friend were going through microfilm at the Burlington Public Library.)

Clipping from Oct. 9, 1939

The headline of the article is “BAD START ON BLAZE DRIVE,” which made me think it was talking about a street called “Blaze Drive.” But the subhead is “Prevention Week Opened with Five Alarms Including $1,000 Loss.”

So the headline writer was trying to be clever with “Blaze Drive” but it didn’t work. As someone who has had to write headlines in her career, I cringed.

But here’s the meat of the article:

Burlington made anything but an auspicious start for Fire Prevention week, with five weekend alarms answered — including one at the Sutter Drug Co. store at Third and Jefferson streets this morning. The loss at the drug store, where there was a basement fire at 2:40 a.m. today, may reach $1,000, Fire Chief R.P. Collatt said. Both he and Joseph Sutter of the drug company were at loss to establish definite cause of the fire. Most of the loss, however, was from water.

Fire In Basement

The blaze, apparently starting under the basement steps at the extreme north end of the store, set off the sprinkler system in spouting water automatically sent in a fire alarm.

Mr. Sutter said all basement rubbish is kept in metal containers with lids, and was of the opinion a can of wax or paint may have been responsible. Only slight fire damage to the basement or stock was reported. The loss was covered by insurance.

The article goes on to document some other small blazes that happened around Burlington; two dump fires, one grass fire, and a car fire.

This wasn’t the first fire that has happened to Sutter Drug while in the Tama Building. The most dramatic one that I know of happened in 1915 and you can read my post about it here.

Notice the ladder and icicles at Sutter-Ludman after the fire at the store on North Third Street.