One year after fire, Metropolitan site is still a mess

CHAMPAIGN – For 130 years, the magnificent Metropolitan Building stood at the corner of Church and Neil streets. For the last year, it's been a pond-filled hole in the ground, and there's no suggestion of a plan right now to replace it.

"We're stuck at this point," co-owner George Grubb said Thursday. "If we do finally build something, I promise it will be something this city is proud of."

The Nov. 7 fire proved to be a disaster for a much newer building as well. The M2 complex across the street has fire damage that could be as much as $2 million – and the only way to find out exactly how bad the damage is requires tearing a sizable number of bricks off the south-facing wall.

An M2 co-owner, Jon "Cody" Sokolski, says there are "16 or 17" insurance companies involved in cleaning up the mess.

No cause has ever been determined for the early morning Metropolitan Building fire, and only about half the insurance money has been paid to M2, he said.

The uncertainly makes it difficult for M2 to sell units on its south side, and a major tenant, Destihl brewery and restaurant, has yet to move in a year after it originally planned to.

The owner of Destihl, Matt Potts, said Thursday that the opening is planned for spring 2010.

M2 isn't the only collateral damage. The Orpheum Children's Science Museum at the far end of the block from M2, also has damage, about $75,000 worth, said executive director Sonya Darter.

"We finished our repairs about two months ago; most of the repairs were done in the first few months," said Darter, who added that she was pleased with the insurance company response.

From time to time, the museum discovers another small roof leak caused a year ago by the fire's floating embers.

"They just show up, and that's a problem for us because we just renovated our theater," she said.

The Dobbins, Fraker, Tennant, Joy & Perlstein law firm is still in temporary quarters out of the downtown area at the Interstate Research Park in northern Champaign.

And there's no plan in place for a new Metropolitan, especially in the worst financial climate since the Great Depression.

Grubb said building an 1870s-style edifice is impossible in today's construction world.

Bob Ballsrud of Busey Wealth Management and frequent downtown developer Jeff Mellander are other owners of the Metropolitan Building, which they had been converting to upscale apartments.

Grubb had looked at pipes for the sprinkler system on the day before the fire, he recalls.

Last Nov. 7, a homeless man called in the Metropolitan Building fire.

When firefighters got there at 5:18 a.m., they found the second and third floors engulfed in flames. The heat and fire were so intense that the commander determined the building too dangerous to enter and directed firefighters to aim their water hoses from a distance.

Less than 15 minutes later, the building's walls started to collapse. There would be nothing to reclaim.

Property damage was estimated to be more than $3.5 million. As the walls collapsed inward, they destroyed physical evidence that might have explained the cause of the blaze.

Champaign Fire Department spokeswoman Dena Schumacher said the department's role ended a month after the fire, when investigators concluded they couldn't determine a cause and turned over the scene to insurance investigators.

"I asked our investigator (if the insurance investigators determined a cause). They did not come up with a cause. I think it's left as undetermined, put to bed with the rubble of the building. I don't think any of us think we'll ever know," she said.

One thing was almost immediately apparent. Not only was the Metropolitan Building, 219-223 N. Neil St., damaged by the blaze. Within weeks, it became apparent that 215 N. Neil St., the law firm of Dobbins, Tenant, Fraker, Joy & Perlstein had been damaged so extensively that it was structurally unsafe and had to come down.

For visitors to downtown bars and other businesses, traffic was snarled, as the block of Neil Street in front of the fire site was closed out of concern that damaged walls might collapse into passing traffic or onto pedestrians.

Dave Jones, the chief financial officer of One Main Development, the builder of the $44 million M2, said things went from bad to worse for the investment shortly after the fire, when the first insurance inspector determined that damage to M2 from the fire's heat was fairly minimal.

Over time, that assessment proved far from correct. Jones said workers began to noticed flashing had melted, and then found evidence that vapor barrier had been compromised.

The only way to get at it to inspect it, let alone repair it, is to remove bricks or drywall or both.

That's why it's hard to come up with an exact figure for repairs, M2's owners say.

"I'd say $1.8 million would be in the ballpark," Jones said.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Building's owners have received the money. But Grubb noted that the economy has made investors in a large building short at this time.

The large hole on Neil Street includes not only the Metropolitan, but the former law office. When something is built there, Grubb said, the smart developer would want to have both lots.

"Whoever eventually does something will want to gain control of the other lot," Grubb said. "That is a very central, pivotal point in town – it shouldn't remain the way it is now."

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• Displaced by fire, law firm remains without quarters
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• Obituaries

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