ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO – There was a fire at an abandoned mall in north St. Louis County that the Urban League has been using for its food distribution.
The old Jamestown mall has been re-boarded back up after a fire late Friday night. Most of the damage was done to the inside of the building. Firefighters were called out just before 8:30 Friday night to the abandoned mall. They said it looked as though there were two separate fires within the building, one of which was over near the old Macy’s. Over the years you can see that the building has been been vandalized and people have made their way inside. Because of the size and scale of this building, they did upgraded it to a three-alarm fire so many different agencies from around the area came in to assist. They were able to extinguish it in a little over an hour but for the past few weeks the Urban League of Metropolitan an Saint Louis has use the old Jamestown mall as a distribution site for their event.
“That was inside the structure the outside where we work at in the parking lot was not harmed at all,” said Roy Gillespie, Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis Director of Logistics.
They’ve held the event for the last 11 Saturdays and each time they serve roughly 3500 families.
“It seems like every day we have more and more people run out of benefits so that’s what we’re trying to help. “
The Urban League plans to continue the food distribution every Saturday through August here at the old Jamestown mall. Fox 2 is a proud media sponsor of the event.
