“Three apartment units are pretty well burned out,” Smith said, but he could not provide a damage estimate.
Other units in the roughly 140-room former hotel had water and smoke damage.
Even before the fire, city officials had been working on options for the property after a request for proposals to rehab the site failed.
“The city did not receive qualified proposals and moved to identify other opportunities for redevelopment,” Community Development Director Shannon Meadows said.
City departments are seeking to identify the best approach to reuse the former Villager Inn site, she said.
“Various departments will make a recommendation to the city manager in the aftermath of this recent emergency,” Meadows added.
City commissioners in December approved the purchase of the property with American Rescue Plan Act funds.
David Estrop, city commissioner, said Wednesday he still holds out hope the former hotel can be used for a shelter.
“We desperately need housing for the homeless. I would hope we could continue to develop something there,” Estrop said. “If portions of the building can be saved and used, let’s do that.”
He said the city paid for an appraisal of the Villager before the purchase was completed, but a few months ago, City Manager Bryan Heck told commissioners that officials were not sure what to do with the building based on conditions.
Estrop said the city then hired a company to assess the building, make recommendations of remodeling or demolishing it and suggesting next steps. He said that process was ongoing.
No work had started on rehab of the former hotel, Meadows said, as staff worked on redevelopment options.
About the same time as the city purchased the Villager Inn, it paid $1.34 million for the Executive Inn on West Columbia Street, also through ARPA funds.
The Executive Inn was the planned temporary solution to the homelessness crisis and the Villager the long-term solution, Estrop said.
Officials said at the time of the purchase the Executive Inn site eventually would be used for redevelopment.
“It’s close to downtown, it’s close to two hospitals. There’s multiple options for use of that property,” Estrop said.
With the fire and earlier problems at the Villager site, he said: “The Executive probably will stay in use longer than we anticipated.”
The original timeline intended for some rooms at the Villager Inn to be online by now, Estrop said. He is not sure what the new timeline will be.
“It’s a real setback in terms of what we are trying to accomplish for the homeless in our community,” he said.
The cause of Tuesday’s fire remains under investigation. The fire marshal’s office investigators went back to the scene Wednesday, Smith 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.
Meadows said staff members are coordinating plans for safety and security at the site moving forward and anticipates a recommendation this week.
Firefighters had to force their way into the complex because of the fence surrounding it to address the fire.
“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.
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