BEAUMONT, Texas — It's been more than 24 hours since the Gilbert Building in downtown Beaumont went up in flames. Now city leaders are demanding owners take responsibility and be held accountable for dilapidated buildings.
City Councilmen Mike Getz tells 12News he believes these buildings are standing in the way of the vision of a revitalized downtown.
Getz says the Gilbert Building was a key component of what they wanted to see restored in downtown. The owner of the building, Tom Flanagan tells 12News that he wanted to turn the building into upscale apartments.
"Waste always makes me angry and this is sheer waste," Getz said. "I made an inquiry back in March about what are we doing to enforce our codes. That was received with an inventory that was produced of about 11 buildings this was one of the ones that were on the inventory lists that was marked as imitate danger."
"We identified that it needed to be boarded up and secured. And in that case they were working with the property owner," said Beaumont Mayor Roy West.
Flanagan says the building was boarded up and he believes vandals are to blame for the fire. Mayor West says the building had no electricity, so investigators are still working to learn how it started.
"Protecting property is the primary responsibility for the city and certainty keeping our firefighters safe. It may well have been the largest, tallest structure fire we've had in Beaumont," said Mayor West.
Getz believes former city management dropped the ball when it comes with enforcing code violations.
"The previous city manager did not think it was a priority to enforce code violations for downtown buildings so they were pretty much left unaddressed," he said.
Getz says building owners need to secure their buildings so they aren't targeted by vandals.
"We need to require building owners downtown to have electricity to their buildings, burglar alarms and cameras. If those things had been in place this would have certainty not have happened last night," Getz told 12News.
Getz says the workshop will take place on July 2 to further discuss the city's plans for vacant and abandon buildings downtown.
Flanagan tells 12News this is the second building of his to catch fire. The first was the old Texas Workforce building in 2023.