Warehouse hoped to be hotel suffers fire in Milwaukee

By DAVID CLAREY, SOPHIE CARSON and CHRIS RAMIREZ

USA TODAY Network

A 22-year-old Milwaukee woman who said she discarded a burning cigarette is charged in connection to a large fire that broke out at an abandoned warehouse May 20 on Milwaukee’s north side.

Ellen Stevens faces a single count of negligent handling of burning material, a misdemeanor.

Milwaukee County prosecutors say in a criminal complaint filed May 22 that Stevens confessed on social media she believes she touched off the inferno by accident, calling the ordeal “devastating.”

The large fire prompted what’s known as a “five-alarm fire” response by the Milwaukee Fire Department, with the department bringing in dozens of firefighters and surrounding agencies responding to the massive blaze.

Speaking with media during the effort, Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said the fire’s cause raised questions. The building was not connected to gas or electricity, for instance.

“The chances of something, after all these years, just starting itself on fire are pretty slim,” he said.

Authorities have been aided in their investigation by video surveillance footage from a nearby building, according to a criminal complaint.

The footage shows four people – one of them later identified as Stevens – walk through the parking lot of a building to the rear west side of the structure at 4:19 p.m.

These same four subjects were seen leaving the area around 5:41 p.m. and were confronted by a citizen witness, who told them they couldn’t be on the private property and told them to leave.

The witness later told police one of them told him that they had just come from the vacant building and that they were leaving. They were last seen walking south on North 32nd Street about 30 minutes before the fire was discovered, the complaint says.

Stevens emerged as a suspect when someone who knew her contacted police on May 20. That person showed them SnapChat photos and videos Stevens shared of herself inside the building.

The post included a picture of Stevens allegedly shot by herself with the caption stating, “I may or may not have lit the bando on fire today on accident,” according to the complaint. It also featured a photo of the structure smoking with the fire department conducting battling the blaze with the caption “Devastating.”

Stevens was interviewed by investigators after the fire.

According to the complaint, Stevens admitted to trespassing on the property with three other people and to smoking a cigarette on the rooftop.

Stevens said she discarded the cigarette through an opening on the roof, and that about 20 minutes later, as they were making their way down through the building, they discovered a pile of fallen debris “smoking and having visible embers,” the complaint says.

Stevens told investigators she and the other three people stomped on the smoldering pile and thought they had put the fire out, according to the complaint. They left, only to learn later that the structure had caught on fire.

More than two dozen Milwaukee Fire Department fire trucks, along with 18 trucks and battalions from Northshore and Wauwatosa, seven medical units and other emergency personnel, responded to the massive blaze. Forty-two Milwaukee police officers also were on the scene.

City contractors began to demolish the building on May 21. Video shows fire trucks remained on scene, watering the debris as the demolition ensued.

The property is owned by an organization affiliated with Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ, which has redeveloped several buildings in the area. It was once a large tannery complex.

The influential Black church, once led by Bishop Sedgwick Daniels, is one of Milwaukee’s largest.

Holy Redeemer has transformed the area near the warehouse by adding buildings such as an arts and music center, a conference center, a youth center and three schools along West Hampton Avenue from North 32nd to North 35th streets.

Holy Redeemer’s community development corporation proposed back in 2008 and 2010 for the abandoned building to be developed into a mixed-use structure with hotel, office and retail spaces, according to a proposal document submitted to the city.

Plans called for a hotel to take three floors, office and retail space on the bottom two floors, and at least 16 residential units to be housed on the upper floors.

The hotel would have been a 48-room Quality Inn, according to a Journal Sentinel report. Developers estimated the project would cost $5 million, and they hoped to start construction in 2012. It doesn’t appear from building permits that significant steps had been taken to start those renovations.

“As one of the earliest surviving structures connected to the site’s industrial history, the building carried both historical and sentimental significance within the continuing narrative of our ministry and community development efforts,” Valerie Daniels-Carter, Holy Redeemer’s senior executive pastor, said in a statement.

She is also the executive director of the development corporation.

Stevens is expected make her initial court appearance on May 26.