Smith said no damage estimate is available yet for the property at 1715 W. North St., but he added, “Three apartment units are pretty well burned out.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The fire marshal’s office investigators were to be back at the scene today, he said.
“They’ve had a lot of homeless people, squatters out there,” Smith said, noting that Springfield Police Division officers had been at the property earlier Tuesday.
City commissioners in December approved the $1.7 million purchase of the property with plans to convert the complex into a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. American Rescue Plan Act money paid for the purchase.
Firefighters had to force their way into the complex because of the fence surrounding it.
“We had to cut the gates of the fences down to get ourselves in there,” Smith said.
“It went to a second alarm,” he said, noting the need for additional crews and the use of “quite a few cylinders” of oxygen for the firefighters.
Mutual aid from neighboring departments covered other city calls during the response.
The former Villager Inn is about a block away from the planned site of a new city fire station to be built on Zischler Street. Construction has not started on it.
“That station will not be open for at least another year,” Smith said.