A structure fire in Johnson City Sunday night has led to questions on the future renovations of the old General Mills property, located on the corner of Sevier Street and West Walnut in Johnson City.
Summers-Taylor entered into a sales contract worth $570,000 to move their operations from Elizabethton to Johnson City, with the contract being approved at a Johnson City-Jonesborough-Washington County Chamber of Commerce meeting held in July.
Summers-Taylor President Grant Summers was unavailable prior to the Elizabethton Star’s press deadline but Washington County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Gary Mabrey added that the Chamber has been in constant contact with the Summers’ family in regards to the blaze.
“They’ll be on scene to view the damage and make a determination on what steps to take moving forward,” Mabrey said.
A joint-press conference held by the Johnson City police and fire chiefs to report updates on the structure indicated that there was damage to the roof and third floor of the building while other spots of the building received water damage while the police indicated they reported to a burglary at the building roughly 10 minutes prior to the report of the fire. The owners of Summers-Taylor were reportedly on scene to view the damage around noon on Monday.
The contract entered by Summers-Taylor featured a 90-day due diligence phase, which would be followed by a 60-day time frame for the deal to be finalized.
While weeks away from selling the building, Mabrey remained optimistic that the sale would be finalized.
“The building is still under contract,” he added. “We don’t have that type of information at this time but we’ll work to make sure we can get this deal finalized. We still feel confident that we’ll have the deal finalized, but we’re still awaiting the investigation from the fire marshal.”
Mabrey also thanked the firefighters and other emergency personnel for their assistance in dousing the flames and their professionalism throughout the investigation process.
During a July interview with the Elizabethton Star, Grant Summers added the company had looked at moving to a more centralized location for an extended amount of time.
“We had been thinking about the concept of moving for a little while,” Summers said. “Geographically, it made sense for us to move to a more centralized location to service the cities and counties. Once we came across the building, we explored the concept of purchasing it. We felt like this was the perfect opportunity for us to move and restore a historic building in Washington County.”
The move would relocate the Summers-Taylor office inside the 100-plus year-old building, with Summers adding that the office would only take up around 25 to 30 percent of the building, with an idea of allowing other types of companies to set up shop within the facility.
While an exciting move for the company, Summers did add the decision didn’t come with ease.
“It was a tough decision,” he said. “It has been great in Elizabethton and we’ve always enjoyed our time here. We’ve been at this location (West Elk) for over 80 years but we still plan on serving the needs of our area.”
The investigation on the fire is still ongoing.