Landmark restaurant burns in Detroit
DETROIT — Fire destroyed a landmark restaurant and brewpub Friday in Midtown Detroit, but spared the neighboring Third Man Records store owned by musician Jack White as well as Shinola’s flagship watch store.
No one was inside Traffic Jam & Snug at the time of the blaze and the restaurant was believed to be a total loss, fire officials said.
“Such sad news. The Cass Corridor institution ‘Traffic Jam and Snug Restaurant’ suffers a total loss fire,” White, a singer and songwriter, wrote Friday on Instagram. “My heart and support goes out to them and their workers for this loss.”
The Detroit-born performer founded The White Stripes. He opened the Third Man Records store in 2015 and launched a vinyl record-pressing plant there in 2017. The blaze did not spread to the record store, the Shinola store or other nearby businesses.
Detroit Fire Community Relations Chief James Harris said firefighters were called to the restaurant before 2 a.m., The Detroit News reported. No injuries were reported and the cause wasn’t immediately known.
“It took us a couple of hours to contain the fire and we’re conducting a thorough investigation into how it started and where it started,” Harris said.
Traffic Jam was established 1965, according to its website. Owner Scott Lowell told the newspaper that he was on a humanitarian mission at the border between Poland and Ukraine and that he was trying to return to Detroit.
“I’ve been watching it on the news and videos,” Lowell said. “I don’t really have much to say. It just feels like a bad dream. I’ve watched it and I just feel helpless from here.”