Historic building burns

PALMER -- Fire completely destroyed the Matanuska Valley Farmers Cooperating Association building Tuesday night. Fire officials suspect the blaze was set intentionally, and Wednesday the state fire marshal and Palmer Police Department were investigating the scene.

Palmer Police Chief George "Russ" Boatright said Thursday morning two potential leads seem to be developing in the case, one pointing to an adult and the other to a group of juveniles. Boatright confirmed that Palmer police officers had been to Palmer Junior Middle School Wednesday to follow up on information, but as of Thursday, no one was in custody.

"We followed up, probably eight or 10 leads yesterday, and some of them did lead us to the middle school," Boatright said. "I feel very confident this will be resolved in the near future."

Wednesday, Boatright said the fire appeared to be no accident. He explained that there was no power or gas to the building, nothing that would naturally cause fire to break out.

"I'm not saying someone went in there and sloshed gasoline around," Boatright said, "but it may well have been something that just got out of hand."

Smoke was reportedly coming from the building at 5:38 p.m. Tuesday and crews from the Palmer, Butte and Central Mat-Su fire departments responded, along with the Palmer Ambulance crew. Crews worked through the night Tuesday and were still on the scene Wednesday, working to put out the blaze.

"We're very shocked," said Grace Pleasants, co-owner of Heritage Properties LLC, the company that took ownership of the building in December 2000. "We're still kind of trying to understand what happened."

Pleasants said the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was mostly vacant at the time of the fire. Her company, she said, had struggled to keep vandals out of the historic buildings since their purchase, but it was often a losing battle.

"We had a darned hard time trying to keep people out of our buildings," Pleasants said. She explained that, although plywood sheets were screwed over windows and entry points in the building, trespassers used powered screwdrivers to remove the screws and gain entry.

Heritage acquired the site, valued at about $1 million, in 2000 from the Division of Agriculture after going through a stringent bid process. Ray Nix, asset manager with the division, said Heritage and one other corporation submitted proposals in 1998 detailing plans to restore the property. Heritage won out in the end, and Nix said the title was transferred to the company with the understanding that the past assessments must be paid, and that Heritage would be responsible for covering the cost of restoration. Pleasants said her company had worked with the borough, the city of Palmer and private development companies to come up with proposals to restore the buildings.

"It had basically gotten nowhere, showing various schemes as to how to develop the property and allow the public to have basic interaction with the site," Pleasants said. "We had just made the determination a couple of weeks ago … and received drawings from our architect's office to do the restoration as a historic apartment complex."

Pleasants said she wasn't sure Wednesday where those plans stood. The company offered to turn over to the city of Palmer the title to the historic water tower and the land it sits on in exchange for a reduction in back assessments.

Tom Healy, Palmer's city manager, said Heritage took over assessments levied on the property several years ago after the city improved roads in the area. Nix said the division, when it handed over the property, owed nearly $70,000. Accrued interest has driven that number up to about $99,000. Healy said the city council will likely agree to Pleasants' proposed exchange.

Pleasants said she was not sure how Heritage will proceed with the land, or any further restoration process. After the state fire marshal allows access to the site, she plans to assess the damage and begin securing the area.

"It is our intent, with our insurance company, to secure the site and then deal with the debris," Pleasants said.

As far as future development of the property, Pleasants said she and her company are committed to making good use of the space.

"We will do something on the site -- it's a great site," Pleasants said. "We had, I thought, some great ideas to do some public uses."