People call on city to take action against Del Paso Boulevard abandoned building break ins
SACRAMENTO — There is a plea from businesses along a once-bustling part of Sacramento struggling to bounce back after the pandemic.
We caught up with the head of a brew pub that had to evacuate Tuesday night before after a fire at an empty building next door.
He said it's part of a much bigger problem that he and others have brought to the city but says no one seems to be listening.
"All of a sudden, one of my staff comes in [and] they're like, 'Smoke! There's a fire! We got to go, we got to go!' " said Jonathan Tate, head brewer at King Cong Brewery.
It was a frantic escape from King Cong Brewery as staff and customers saw smoke and flames shooting out of the abandoned building next door.
Tate said it was scary because it's happened before at a deserted auto shop on Del Paso Boulevard.
"Over the last three weeks, we've had a few people who literally break into it in the back and have had little tiny fires inside," he said. "They start little fires to stay warm."
While investigators have yet to say what sparked the fire, Tate said the bigger issue is intervention from the city to address the number of empty buildings in a section of north Sacramento that's been fighting to revive itself for years.
"I've seen the growth that's happened and I just don't want [it] to all burn down," he said.
In a push for accountability, the director of the Del Paso Boulevard Partnership went before the Sacramento City Council on Tuesday night as a launching point for more dialogue and action.
"There should be some government interaction to actually get in touch with the business owners to actually possibly do something with their building or sell it to somebody who is actually interested in buying it, versus sit on it and let it damn near fall over," he said at the meeting.
It's a battle to bring the boulevard back before efforts to revitalize it are hampered.
Thankfully, no one was hurt in Tuesday night's fire and the flames never spread to any other nearby businesses.