Two massive fires in vacant buildings in a one-month period have area businesses and residents asking if more should be done to secure vacant buildings in Downtown St. Joseph.
Vacant buildings are high risk Right now, there are more questions than answers after last Monday’s blaze destroyed the Pioneer Building exactly one month after city firefighters fought a major fire at another Downtown structure.
Cole Woodbury, president of the Historic St. Joseph Foundation and a Downtown business owner, sees vacant buildings as a problem.
“We’ve got buildings sitting empty and not secured,” he said. “People who have property near (the Pioneer) building are constantly chasing out the homeless or chasing out scrap metal thieves.”
Mike Neylon, with the St. Joseph Fire Department, said individuals who are homeless break in to vacant structures to have a place to stay. Once a break-in is reported and a building is secured, Neylon said, it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.
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