Plans afoot to rebuild at massive Ogden fire site, but some rubble remains
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- The site of a devastating June 28-29, 2021, fire that destroyed three homes and a four-story apartment building that was taking shape, photographed Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021.
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- The site of a devastating June 28-29, 2021, fire that destroyed three homes and a four-story apartment building that was taking shape, photographed Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021.
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- The site of a devastating June 28-29, 2021, fire that destroyed a four-story apartment building that was taking shape, photographed Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. Three homes were also destroyed.
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- The site of a devastating June 28-29, 2021, fire that destroyed three homes and a four-story apartment building that was taking shape, photographed Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021.
OGDEN — Five months later, the rubble of three homes torched in a devastating fire last June in the 300 block of 28th Street remains.
The remnants of a four-story apartment building that was taking shape — also destroyed in the massive blaze — have been cleared and the site sits wide open.
Plans are afoot, though, to rebuild, both the apartment building and at the site where the three homes once stood just to the west. Notably, the apartment building, a 40-unit structure in its original incarnation before the June 28 fire struck, will be rebuilt larger, with around 85-92 units, according to the owner, Elite Craft Homes.
Elite Craft Homes has acquired five more parcels on the north side of the original piece of property where the apartment building was taking shape, expanding the construction area from around 1 acre to 1.8 acres, enabling the larger structure.
“Hopefully, we will be starting within a few months. We really just have to meet all of the city requirements to get started again,” said Jerry Preston, the Elite Craft Homes president. He said the planned structure will have more two- and three-bedroom units than the prior one.
Mark Johnson, the chief administrative officer for Ogden, said the land where the three torched homes sit, off the northeast corner of 28th Street and Grant Avenue just west of the Elite Craft Homes site, has been acquired by another developer. He’s not sure of the new owner and online Weber County property records didn’t identify the buyer, at least not yet.
“What they’re going to do with it, I’m not certain,” Johnson said. But the new development will be residential, he said, and he suspects it will be multi-family housing, which encompasses apartments and townhomes.
Meantime, fire officials have no new information to report with regard to the cause. They think the fire was human-caused and that people were inside the unfinished apartment structure before the blaze, which started the evening of June 28 and wasn’t doused until the early morning of June 29.
Fire officials suspect homeless people were behind the fire, “but without leads, it’s hard to confirm,” said Kevin Brown, fire marshal for the Ogden Fire Department. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Explosives last August announced a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons involved, and that stands, Brown said.
Neighbors have said the area is a magnet for homeless people, and Anthony Higareda, who lives two houses east of the now-vacant apartment complex site, says the homeless still come around, sometimes sleeping in the lot. He lamented the continued presence of the rubble of the three homes west of him.
“They should clean it up. It makes the neighborhood look bad,” he said. “They haven’t done nothing about that. I wish they did.”
Johnson said city officials have broached the matter with the new owners of the three parcels. “We’ve been pushing on them to get it cleaned up,” he said.