A fire caused “significant” damage to the former Asheville Waste Paper Company building, an iconic River Arts District structure slated to be the new home of the Salvage Station music venue.
No injuries were reported, according to the Asheville Fire Department. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The building at 304 Lyman Street is best known for its heavily-graffitied exterior, which features an artist’s rendering of Homer Simpson from “The Simpsons” combined with Bender from “Futurama.”
Asheville Fire Department Battalion Chief Adam Hoffman said the department received a call about the fire just after 11 p.m. Thursday night. A total of about 14 fire trucks responded to the scene. Even before the blaze, the fire marshal had deemed the structure a “do not enter” building because it contains many holes and hazards. The firefighters worked until morning to extinguish the fire with the help of an aerial ladder, Hoffman said.
“There's piles up there that are possibly going to continue smoldering over the next couple of days,” Hoffman told BPR at the scene Friday morning, as firefighters continued to douse the building. “And that's what we're going to do — we'll continue monitoring it. Not only today, but the days to come, if we see any smoke, anything like that, we'll call some resources back out and take care of it.”
The Asheville Fire Department said in a Facebook post that there was “significant fire damage to the building.”
Salvage Station owners Danny McClinton and Katie Hild did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The original music venue had been located about a mile to the north, on Riverside Drive. In mid-2024, the owners announced that they were being forced to relocate by the end of the year to make way for the Interstate 26 Connector project. Then, Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024, ravaging much of Western North Carolina. The venue, like many others along the river, was left in ruins.
A little over a year later, McClinton and Hild announced an agreement with the owners of the Lyman Street property, which they planned to transform into an indoor music venue. The news was greeted with celebration by many residents and longtime Salvage Station fans.
It’s unclear what the extent of the damage is.
Sporting a Salvage Station shirt and a tattoo of the venue’s logo on his right arm, a man who gave his name as ScareKrow stood outside the charred building Friday morning, the scent of fire still thick in the air.
A singer-songwriter and sound engineer who has worked for Salvage Station since 2020, he watched the firefighters as they doused the remnants of the blaze. The venue “can't seem to catch a break,” he said.
“It's true, Western North Carolina, Appalachian community — us all coming together to try and do another big, beautiful music venue, even through all the adversities and everything that all of my brothers and sisters at Salvage went through,” he said. “And we're just trying to do good things for people, man.”
He looked up at the graffiti on the building.
“Homer's still smiling,” he said with a laugh. “Homer's still smiling, so we'll go with that, you know?”
