San Diego police this week arrested a 47-year-old man on suspicion of setting fire to a vacant Mission Valley dance club early Christmas Day, a building that has seen several fires in recent years.
Investigators said the man, who is homeless, was identified from surveillance video taken near the building on Mission Center Road near Mission Center Court.
Six days later, officers arrested him. He is being held in jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond and is scheduled to be arraigned Friday, jail records show.
Police said the man is not considered a suspect in an October fire that largely gutted the building, which is near office buildings and other businesses.
The nearly 13,000-square-foot two-story structure was built in 1986. For many years it housed bustling nightclubs — first Confetti’s and later the country-western themed InCahoots, which was open for more than 25 years before it closed at the end of 2018.
When the building sold in 2019, an agent representing the seller told The San Diego Business Journal that the new owner planned to convert it to retail use. City officials said the property owner is Bridge California LLC.
The property is again for sale, according to a listing that was posted in April.
Over the years, the empty building attracted squatters. Firefighters who responded to a fire there in November 2020 told reporters they had received reports of numerous homeless people living in or around it.
A much-larger fire occurred early in the morning of Oct. 26, when a two-alarm blaze sent flames 30 feet into the air and took more than 100 firefighters to extinguish. Part of the roof collapsed in that blaze and officials red-tagged the building, indicating it was unsafe. It is one of 46 red-tagged buildings in the city, records show.
After the October fire, which was determined to be suspicious, city officials contacted a representative of the property owner and told them they needed to secure the property, a fire department spokesperson said. It was noted that security guards were patrolling the exterior of the building at times.
Fire officials also asked the city’s building and land use department to follow up on enforcement. The city issued an administrative citation warning on Tuesday that described corrective actions the property owner should take. Specifics about the warning were not immediately available.
The October fire remains under investigation by the San Diego Metro Arson Strike Team, officials said. Authorities are asking anyone with information to contact the Metro Arson Strike Team at 619-236-6815 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
