‘A total loss’: Giant fire downtown collapses historic warehouse as developer eyed highrise development

More than 100 years of history, gone in the blink of an eye.

It took less than nine hours for the century-old Hamilton Store Fixtures - once famous by virtue of its unsightly brown metal cladding - to be reduced to a pit of rubble over the weekend.

Now a mound of shaved bricks and debris, the culprit for the death of the iconic warehouse at 206 King St. W. was a massive fire early Saturday morning that rocked its foundation.

At least 45 firefighters responded to the former supply store and radio station at the corner of King and Caroline streets around 6 a.m. for what quickly developed into a three-alarm structure fire.

Hamilton Fire Chief Dave Cunliffe said crews were met with heavy smoke and intense heat upon arrival to the vacant, four-storey commercial building.

A 114-year-old, U-shaped structure - around since the 1920s and made largely of timber wood - Cunliffe said the building was susceptible to rapidly changing fire and smoke conditions, prompting crews to be pulled out for their own safety.

Flames were shooting out of there," said Rita Kuriinlahti, whose morning coffee trip to the Tim Hortons on King was cut short by the huge blaze. The smoke was very, very heavy."

Within the hour, all four walls on the building had collapsed, leaving a pit of rubble at its centre and large amounts of debris strewn across nearby streets.

It also resulted in collateral damage. A portion of the building's eastern wall tumbled onto the adjacent 24-hour A&W outlet, which had to be evacuated, Cunliffe said. Parked vehicles, street lights, traffic lights and a bus shelter were also damaged. Meanwhile, embers spewing from the raging fire landed on a 24th-floor balcony of the nearby Marquee Residence condo tower at 20 George St.

Crews were quick to respond there and got out with limited damage," Cunliffe told reporters outside the scene.

Buoyed by heavy winds, the blaze caused clouds of thick smoke to blanket the downtown and other parts of the city. Residents in the area were instructed to keep their windows closed.

We had calls from people on the Hamilton Mountain that were experiencing smoke into their residences," Cunliffe said.

Christina Rodriguez said she awoke at her home on Upper Gage Avenue around 7 a.m. to a smothering smell of smoke.

I had to call my mom who lives in downtown to tell her to close the windows," she said, sitting on a curb outside the Tim Hortons.

Trish Pritchard thought nothing was amiss when she saw what at first looked like fog from her 21st floor apartment at the highrise on George.

Then I thought, no, it's too thick for fog and looked like it was on fire, so I thought maybe it was burning pieces of paper," she said. But then it really smelled like smoke and I figured it was a fire."

Little did Pritchard know the smell of smoke wasn't just coming from the iconic building on King, but also a mere three storeys above her on a balcony of the 32-storey condo building.

No one was getting evacuated so we just got out ourselves," added friend Silvia Reiser, who lives on the 18th floor.

Cunliffe said the small condo blaze was limited to a single unit. There were no injuries.

There were also no injuries to civilians or firefighters at the fire on King.

A deep-seated blaze, crews remained on scene for hours dousing hot spots and flare-ups from the vantage point of three aerial tankers.

Even after the fire appeared largely extinguished, dozens of passersby stopped to watch another spectacle at 206 King: a heavy-duty excavator, brought in due to structural safety concerns, plowing through its crumbling walls.

By 4 p.m., the historic building lamented as an eyesore was nothing but crumbling debris and bricks, strewn on the roadway in uneven heaps.

The building is a total loss," Cunliffe said.

A total loss - but not unforeseen, just early.

Toronto-based developer Vernon Shaw was in the process of getting a demolition permit from the city to build a 14-storey, 122-unit condo tower at the site.

Dubbed the Radio Arts" condos - a name invoking a former life at the building from the 1960s -Shaw hopes to erect a brick-and-beam residential highrise marketed toward young professionals.

Downtown Coun. Jason Farr said Sunday the developer already has conditional site approval and planned to begin building in the fall.

They submitted documentation and (a) salvage report three weeks ago," Farr said, adding the report still has to go through staff review and approval before a demolition permit is granted.

It's unclear if the fire will affect the proposed development.

Shaw, who acquired the property in 2018, couldn't be reached for comment over the weekend.

Cunliffe said it's not yet clear what caused the blaze, and dollar losses are expected to be significant.

Hamilton police's arson unit is now probing the blaze, Acting Staff Sgt. Robert Lejeune said Saturday. There was no update into the investigation Sunday.

Sebastian Bron is a reporter at The Spectator. sbron@thespec.com