Fire guts historic Athens, Tenn., building
ATHENS — Jim Logan sat in Big Belly Deli on Saturday and watched out the front window as his dream burned to the ground.
A fire first reported around 5 a.m. was extinguished through the work of 11 fire departments by 9:30 a.m., but not before it gutted the planned Athens offices of the Cleveland-based Logan-Thompson law firm.
No injuries were reported in the fire.
Logan, a firm partner, said renovation of the red brick building on the corner of Jackson Street and Washington Avenue was 15 days to a month away from completion.
“This is tragic. We wanted to make this a fine facility for the community,” he said. “We were down to just some cosmetic work.”
The goal was to renovate the building on the picturesque town square across from the McMinn County Courthouse, so that it could match as closely as possible to how it looked when it was built in the 1870s.
“The ability to take an old building and give it a rebirth was something we were so excited about,” Logan said. “Now it certainly is sad that we will not be able to have this the way it was.”
He said the building had its original oak flooring, and the rooms still had their original ceilings.
“Now all of that is gone and can’t be replaced,” he said.
Logan was called at his Cleveland home at about 6 a.m. by a friend alerting him that the offices were burning.
He made his way to Athens as soon as possible, but by then the fire had consumed the building.
He said he did not know how the fire started and could think of nothing inside that might have ignited the blaze. He pointed out that it was an old building and that might have made it more susceptible to fires. He also mentioned the possibility that someone might have gotten inside overnight and started the blaze.
The firm was looking forward to expanding its practice in McMinn County.
“We feel this community is really ready to boom and return to its glory days,” Logan said, “and we want to be a part of it.”
Athens Vice Mayor Dick Pelley was at the fire Saturday morning and praised the efforts of firefighters to contain the blaze.
“They [the firefighters] did an awesome job,” Pelley said. “The fire chief told me he was going to apply all his efforts to containing the fire in a single building.”
Although the building was attached to a block-long string of brick shops and businesses, the other buildings in that string sustained only minor damage, Pelley said.
By Saturday night, a dispatcher with McMinn County said the building had been leveled.
Logan called the fire “a huge expense,” but added that the firm is planning to build on the site. “We are going to redouble our efforts to be a part of this community,” he said.