Peters said members of the property management team are working to assess and mitigate the damage. The fire occurred on the third floor of the 10-story building, which is part of the Arcade complex.
The first and second stories of the building have commercial spaces, while floors 3-9 have apartments, and there’s also a community room and exercise space on the 10th floor. iHeartMedia, a radio/digital business, and the Table 33 restaurant occupy office and commercial spaces below the apartment that caught fire.
“Luckily, damage was pretty contained to that unit and the commercial spaces below,” Peters said. “I know they are actively working on the situation.”
Credit: Natalie Jones
Credit: Natalie Jones
Table 33 owner Charlie Carroll said the restaurant had some water damage in its formal dining room, but the bistro and kitchen weren’t affected.
The restaurant won’t have to close entirely, but part of the formal dining room was shut off, he added.
Carroll said the timing is unfortunate since Table 33 saw a decrease in business during the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He said this is another opportunity to get creative to serve the restaurant’s customers.
Peters said property management is trying to minimize the disruption to Table 33’s and iHeartMedia’s operations. She said the building has a robust sprinkler system that hopefully helped contain the fire.
Jeff Stevens, radio host for iHeartMedia stations and Mix 107.7, told the Dayton Daily News that when he heard a fire alarm just after the station’s morning show, at about 9:50 a.m. Thursday, shortly followed by the cascading response of a triggered sprinkler system, he knew it was time to get himself and his crew out of his station’s Arcade studio.
“Not 30 seconds later, I hear ‘drip, drip, drip’ over in the corner … then 10 seconds later, water is streaming down our windows on the outside, facing Fourth Street,” he said. “Just gushing. I said, ‘OK, that’s definitely not good.’”
Stevens said he ran and warned colleagues that the fire alarm was real and told them to evacuate.
“I ran back into the studio, and literally, it looks like a tropical forest on top of our control board, just pouring rain,” he said.
Seconds later, he and co-workers were standing on the street watching as part of the ceiling fell on his station’s equipment. “We would have been standing there when that happened,” he said. “It would have been pretty ugly.”
He said he and colleagues were unharmed. He estimated that the station was off the air for perhaps a “handful of minutes, maybe 10,” starting at around 9:53 a.m. 107.7 is on the air now, he said in an early afternoon interview.
iHeart has four studios at the Arcade, and three were “negatively impacted.” He said Mix 107.7’s morning show will go on Friday from a different part of the Arcade.
Peters said she isn’t on site and doesn’t know what caused the fire or the extent of the damage.
“We are grateful to first responders for their swift and professional action,” she said.
The Dayton Arcade consists of nine interconnected buildings that offer housing, offices, retail, restaurants, hotel rooms and other amenities.
The Arcade has 110 residential units spread across the Commercial, Lindsey and Ludlow buildings. The housing units have been continuously occupied since April of 2021.
