By David Fleming
On the morning of October 31, 2025, a fast-moving fire began in a long-vacant commercial building on Cobb Lane in Birmingham’s Five Points South and tore through an entire block, destroying multiple historic structures and leaving nearly two dozen people displaced.
The blaze started in an unpowered, neglected wood-frame historic house and, fanned by early-morning winds, spread to adjacent brick apartment and condo buildings.
This fire turned a single property vacancy into a neighborhood catastrophe.
The Haskins & Bertha Williams residence was a vacant Victorian house built in 1901 at 1312 20th Street South. Mr. Williams, after purchasing a new car, built a multi-bay garage facing the alley whereupon they rented spaces for neighbors to park their cars. The alley would become known as Cobb Lane. Mr. Williams’s former garage eventually became a gathering place for the public as a series of bars, most recently the J Clyde.
After the original Williams family ceased to live in the main house in the 1970’s, it housed various businesses including an antique store and Black and White Magazine. Next door, the Levert Apartments building became well known to the people of Birmingham when Virginia Cobb relocated her children’s clothing store and tea room to the rear of the building facing the alley in the 1940s.
Her business eventually became the popular Cobb Lane restaurant, the site of many wedding showers and ladies lunches. Collectively, the alley and the buildings together created a space unique to Birmingham that spanned decades and became part of countless people’s memories.
The Williams house had been left vacant for many years by its current owner and was deteriorating – it has been named as the origin of the fire. Within hours, the primary building was a total loss, the Levert Apartments were gone, and the Cobb Lane Condos, all handsome historic structures, were likely total losses as well.
At least 19 people were displaced. Neighbors and business owners watched drone footage and images of smoke that could be seen for miles, mourning lost homes and the physical fabric of one of Birmingham’s most iconic and historic blocks.
While an arsonist was arrested for suspicion of starting the fire, the story here isn’t only about a suspected arson arrest.
It is also about what happens when property is left to decay. The vacant building where the fire began had no power and had been neglected; its condition made it both an attractive target for trespass and a tinderbox when a fire took hold.
Fire officials and neighborhood leaders have since pointed to that vacancy as the proximate reason the blaze could so easily jump to neighboring occupied buildings. That pattern of vacancy plus neglect plus insufficient security turns isolated risk into community disaster.
The Cobb Lane fire points directly to one of the most pressing problems facing Birmingham – namely, the significant presence of absentee property owners neglecting their properties. This is not only a problem in Five Points South, but across downtown and the entire City of Birmingham.
As a city resident and one who has worked on revitalization across our city for 30 years, I can attest that a major obstacle to progress in revitalization of downtown and neighborhoods is who owns the properties. Believe me, I have heard over and over many of the excuses by property owners for inaction. Some of them are worthy of sympathy. However, in most cases, I have found some common frustrating challenges.
Typically, property owners of abandoned properties think the property is worth more than it really is and are waiting on “the right price” to appear. They are part of a group of owners that cannot get everyone to agree on a path forward. Or they are just comfortable with the existing situation and feel no motivation to do anything else.
I have come to believe one solid truth about realizing a new vision of vibrancy for a place. The one that owns the dirt controls the destiny. There can be a great vision for what is possible, and many such great visions have been cast for places in downtown and in Birmingham neighborhoods.
But if those that own a significant number of the properties necessary to realize the vision either will not get on board or will not get out of the way, then there is little hope for the realization of the vision.
This is still a reality all too prevalent in our city. It is most frustrating when this condition exists in parts of the city where there is greater market potential for something positive to occur, like Five Points South.
Property owners in Five Points South, downtown and across Birmingham must recognize that ownership is stewardship. When owners fail to act, the financial and human cost falls on tenants, neighbors, first responders, and the broader city.
Years ago, a pastor instilled in me a truth by saying, “Your irresponsibility becomes someone else’s responsibility”. Others will pay the price of what you fail to take responsibility for.
Yes, there need to be fewer barriers to redevelopment in the city. But more can be done. City officials and community groups should use this moment to tighten enforcement and support sensible remediation: more proactive inspections, clearer pathways for owners to sell hazardous properties, incentives and low-interest loans for sympathetic historic rehabs, and stronger penalties for repeated neglect.
Our utilities and city should make it easier to keep the power on in vacant structures which helps to enable security systems that could catch arsonists or people trespassing in vacant buildings. The City of Mobile is creating a vacant building registry to highlight neglectful property owners, something we should take a look at here in Birmingham.
The Cobb Lane fire is a hard lesson: a single neglected building can destroy a block, upend lives, and erase pieces of a city’s story.
If Birmingham wants its downtown and neighborhoods to thrive safely and sustainably, then property owners must treat stewardship as a civic responsibility, not merely an investment on paper.
Sell, repair, secure, or restore—but do not abandon. The safety of neighbors, the authenticity of our city and its economic future depends on it.
David Fleming is the President and CEO of REV Birmingham, an economic development nonprofit with a mission to create vibrant commercial districts in the Magic City. A native of the area, David lives with his wife and son in Crestwood.
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com
This is a brilliant analysis, David. Thank you for sharing.
Agree totally with Maury. Now if we can get the errant owners to agree & act.
“Ownership is stewardship.” Spot on. Communities suffer when people treat homes and buildings solely as vehicles to make money instead of as places to live and work.
Such a tragic event for an historic property. Birmingham’s legal minds should provide possible solutions to the City Council and Mayor to address the matter now with property owners and not wait. I have often wondered who is responsible for the horrible condition of Powell School and other rundown and disgraceful properties within the City of Birmingham.
David, thank you for all you do with REV.
Catherine Gilmore
Well said and written , David!
Long needed legislation.
Possibly the first respectable “Comeback Town” article? I’m all for freedom and private ownership, but maybe there should be a limit to how long an owner can abandon a property. That “right price” may never come. When it does, was it your “right price” ten years ago, but now you want more? Did property values increase? Great, but maybe not for untended properties. Your right price may increase while the market’s view went from “nice but overpriced” to “dump, no thanks, at any price.” Neglected properties, like neglected cities, can drop in value quickly. Let’s expect owners to do more than pay the property taxes. Or maybe they should understand that the property taxes are too high on unused property. Let’s not let our metro area or its very valuable suburbs decline. Stop the petty arguments and accept the tremendous value our suburbs are to the metro area. We are a unique area, let’s make the most of it.
You’re right, David. Why wasn’t this Victorian era house condemned? The City has the power to do this.
Another problem this event highlights. The man who was there was likely homeless. We apparently do not have enough places for homeless people to go. That too will take a community-wide effort.
Pat the evidence seems to show the person was a pyromaniac. He started a fire first at the Break Out Club on the next block. That’s a place where you pay to be locked in a room and then have to solve a puzzle to get out. I’m not sure whether he started the fire in the room itself or outside it. People who work in the Dobber’s bar below it said boxes behind their place were burned.
What about the City’s program of demolishing abandoned properties? Is it achieving results? Is anything being constructed on the lot where a house has been demolished? Does official demolition have a place along with “Sell, repair, secure, or restore” in addressing the problem?
Some people have called this building abandoned, and it was in a way. But as Mr. Fleming says, this is a different kind of abandonment. It’s a person leaving a building vacant in hopes of getting a high sales or rental price. In some poor parts of town, houses are abandoned because the owners can’t take care of them anymore, and no one would buy them. It kind of makes sense to tear down such buildings.
I actually think the story shows the limits of private ownership. As Mr. Fleming says, we need to demand that owners think of themselves as stewards. They don’t hold properties just for themselves.
This article is ‘spot on!’ Everything written is completely relevant to keeping a good city good and even making it better.
History is important, especially in the unique city of Birmingham. Its very identity lives within its historic structures. (and never forget its bad history, including this, so it has little chance of happening again!) The identity of its future is in the new ones properly placed. Birmingham is fully blessed with excellent architects. Vacant historic houses and other buildings must be at least held in care and preserved as the continuing search for new owners succeeds, even providing new uses that come with the inspiration of new owners. The city must support this through regulation and action, providing a smooth pathway for this to happen, permitting, review and keeping up with the finest historic preservation standards. Get all of them declared and officially ‘historic,’ filed and with signs in front.
Thank you Mr. Fleming. Birmingham is very fortunate to have you.
Property owners need to become aware of inexpensive solutions to prevent intrusion into vacant Properties.
I place a SimpliSafe base station asking with motion detectors and smoke alarms in a vacant property. They are wirelessly monitored and I get an immediate call to confirm whether a a call to first responders is warranted. Otherwise the police and or fire department are dispatched.
I absolutely agree. Owners should take responsibility for their properties or sell them to someone who will.
On properties that have been vacant and run down for many years, use Eminent Domain and confiscate the building, do minor repairs, and then the city can sell the property, via real estate or public auction with requirements that the building has to be improved. This was done with property in the 1800’s that was vacant and the people who claimed the land had just so long to improve it or lose it.