Fire damages multiple buildings on East Adams Street

A fire that started at 413-415 E. Adams St. Wednesday afternoon caused the interior of the building to collapse and damaged several nearby structures, although property owners and tenants said they had not yet been allowed back in their buildings to assess the damage.

The buildings that initially caught fire are home to The Cat's Pjyamas, a cat café that opened earlier this year, Electric Quill Tattoo and The Elf Shelf Books & Music. Multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing the interior floors collapse, which was confirmed by the Springfield Fire Department.

Buzz Bomb Brewing Company posted on social media that the cats from the café were safe inside its business across the street.

Elizabeth Wake owns The Wakery, 5 Old State Capitol Plaza, which backs up to that block of East Adams Street.

"I had a rental group this morning, so I was there with people inside the building," Wake said. "Around 12:30 I could start to smell smoke, but it smelled like cooking at first, so I thought it was just a nearby business but then our smoke detectors started going off."

Wake said firefighters arrived and evacuated the building, which was quickly filling with heavy smoke.

"I haven't been allowed back in, but to my knowledge the fire hadn't spread into our building," Wake said. She said she has another private event scheduled for Thursday morning and an open mic night planned Thursday evening, which she hopes will be able to take place if the building isn't damaged.

Ben Call, a commercial broker who co-owns the two adjacent buildings east of where the fire started, isn't as optimistic about his properties, although he also hasn't been allowed back inside.

"The two buildings adjacent to the one that caught fire, the Zimmerman and Lanphier buildings, the fire department had to hit them with so much water I'm assuming they'll be a total loss," Call said. "Those will probably have to be gutted."

He said the main floor is used as a parking garage, the second floor is office space and the third and fourth floor have a total of eight apartments. Call said all of the offices and apartments are rented.

"A number of the apartments are state reps, people that aren't there full time," he said. "The other tenants, we'll put them up in hotels and get them squared away for now. We're waiting for the fire department to tell us when we can have access so we can secure it all and take an accounting of where we should go from here.

"Nobody got hurt, and these are the reasons you're insured; those are the main things," Call said.

However, Moving Pillsbury Forward, the nonprofit that has been spearheading the cleanup and redevelopment efforts at the former Pillsbury Mills site, has suffered a significant loss.

In March, an art exhibit featuring more than two tons of artifacts, building remnants and other curiosities from the former Pillsbury site was held on the third floor of 413 E. Adams. St. Historical artifacts were displayed along with newly created works of contemporary art.

Chris Richmond, president of MFP, confirmed that the entire "Pillsburied" exhibit was destroyed by today's fire, along with several boxes of historic documents.

"From what we saw down there this afternoon, it looks like a total loss," Richmond said. "That was definitely a gut punch - a lot of effort went into that."

Café Moxo, the restaurant in the adjacent building to the west, posted on Facebook Wednesday evening that "due to the recent fire we are now closed indefinitely until our building has been given the green light to go in and start our assessment of losses and the time it will take to repair."

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional information.