‘There was some type of human intervention’: Quincy Police conducting criminal investigation of ‘suspicious’ Welcome Inn fire

QUINCY — The Quincy Police Department is conducting a criminal investigation after an early Tuesday morning fire decimated the main lobby building of the Welcome Inn, 200 Maine.

Officials with Ameren Gas and Electric were on scene to confirm the building did not have utilities at the time of the fire — which led Steve Salrin, chief of the Quincy Fire Department, to determine help was needed to determine the cause.

“I can tell you what I know,” he said. “I know there were no utilities in that structure, so that means there was some type of human intervention. I don’t know if that was malicious. I don’t know if that was accidental. But it didn’t start on its own, and there was no lightning other accidental type of causes.”

Chad Scott, investigative commander for the Quincy Police Department, confirmed Tuesday afternoon that he was working with the fire department’s cause and origin investigators.

“There’s not a whole lot I can tell you, but obviously we are involved,” he said. “The fire department called us. It looks like it was a suspicious fire. There’s no electricity to the building, so something had to start it. So that’s where we’re at. We’re looking at surveillance video and our normal stuff on any case. We’re seeing what evidence we can gather, and we’ll go from there.”

The first crews from the Quincy Fire Department were called to the hotel at 2:20 a.m. Tuesday, March 11 and saw fire coming from the roof of the main lobby building. A third alarm was called, bringing all on-duty crews to the scene and calling in off-duty personnel to man reserve apparatus in the event another incident happened.

As firefighters tried to control the blaze, fire continued to burn from the inside, forcing an interior crew of firefighters to be pulled outside. Crews continued fighting the fire from the exterior as the roof and part of a wall began to collapse. Two crews were still on the scene at around 8 a.m. as the fire smoldered.

Only the main lobby building on the northern edge of the property was damaged by the fire. The three-story building with all of the rooms was not damaged.

Salrin said the rest of the main lobby building collapsed this morning after city officials had a local contractor bring in a trackhoe to pull away some of the walls at approximately 9:30 a.m.

“There were some hidden fires that we couldn’t get to, because there was still enough of the rubber roof material and we couldn’t get underneath it,” he said. “So I talked with Michael Seaver (director of inspection and enforcement for the city) first thing this morning and told him about our situation. He called in a contractor, and (the trackhoe) just started kind of pulling away the walls to expose those areas so we could hopefully get that fire extinguished and walk away from it.”

Seaver said the trackhoe wasn’t brought in to knock down the building.

“There were some areas of fire that (firefighters) weren’t able to get to,” he said. “We had (the trackhoe) come in and remove sections of wall. I call it a selective partial demolition, but we stopped when we could find a somewhat of a stopping point. The fire was extensive enough that there would have (eventually) been a demolition.”

Seaver said insurance adjusters will be at the site Wednesday, and he expects the property’s owners to move forward soon with completing the demolition.

Documents filed with the Illinois Secretary of State’s office show the agent for Quincy Property LLC is Incorp Services, Inc., of Springfield. The managers of the LLC are Quentin Kearney and Ken Logan of Blue Springs, Mo.

City officials displaced more than 250 people by closing the Welcome Inn on July 28, 2021, after making the determination that “the structure (was) unsafe and its occupancy (was) prohibited.”  Quincy Property LLC filed a lawsuit in June 2022, claiming the city’s actions to close the motel were “arbitrary, capricious and undertaken in bad faith.” 

Officials with the City of Quincy and Quincy Property LLC reached a settlement and dismissal of a civil lawsuit on June 21, 2024, clearing the way for a possible sale of the property. Logan told Muddy River News at that time he had received a letter of interest from someone interested in buying the property.

Logan said he spoke Tuesday morning with the potential buyers of the property.

“As far as I know, they’re still on board,” he said. “(The potential buyers) have a phase two study lined up for this week, and according to the information I received from the city approximately (Tuesday morning), I don’t know anything about a collapse of the building that would hinder a phase two study of what was going on there.

“My gut tells me (the fire) shouldn’t do anything (to hinder the property sale), but you know, I don’t know at this point.”

Logan said he has received reports of “consistent vandalism” since the hotel was deemed uninhabitable. 

“I’m not aware of individuals in there sleeping or anything,” he said.

The Welcome Inn had 121 rooms when it first opened as a Holiday Inn in February 1964.

Two blocks away, the site of the former Newcomb Hotel sits vacant. 

A five-alarm fire gutted the 125-year-old five-story hotel on Sept. 6, 2013. Mathew C. Clark pled guilty in February 2014 to one count of burglary and received 48 months of probation, one year in the Adams County Jail and was ordered to pay $497,364 in restitution. Clark told police investigators he was hunting for scrap metal inside the building at 400 Maine when he accidentally started a fire.

The building had been vacant for several years. The city demolished the building and later cleaned up the property.