Neighbors are breathing easier now – literally – since fire-charred ruins of the old Mount Regis Center have been demolished.

Demolition took place 14 months after the spectacular accidental fire Christmas week 2016 that all-but obliterated the substance abuse treatment center in the historic building on Kimball Avenue in South Salem. The cause of the fire was determined to be “improperly discarded smoking materials.”

For more than a year, neighbors such as Linda McDaniel who lives at the corner had asked Salem officials when something would be done to remove the blackened ruins opened to the elements with its potential health hazards and possible shelter to varmints.

In December 2017, Salem City Council was informed that the insurance company for Acadia Healthcare, which operated the treatment facility, was unlikely to meet the Dec. 22 deadline to complete demolition under terms of the demolition permit filed with the city earlier that year.

The case then went to the Salem Board of Building Appeals that ordered the burned building to be razed with owners responsible for repaying the city. Arcadia’s insurance company hired a demolition contractor, and the city did not have to be involved further.

Demolition of the white-columned building was completed in one day last week, March 6, by Empire Salvage & Recycling out of Bluefield, W. Va. Empire Manager Mark Brewer said asbestos in the building had been removed by another contractor before his firm arrived, and demolition was not a difficult job.

“Now we’ve just got to get rid of the debris,” Brewer said.

“It is a good thing when the city doesn’t have to take care of demolishing the building,” said Chuck Van Allman, Salem Director of Community Development, after a Salem City Council work session on March 12. “We love it when the city doesn’t have more to do,” he added.

The building’s fate had been in limbo since the fire because Mount Regis’ parent company, Acadia Healthcare, was not getting action from its unnamed insurer, according to Mount Regis’ CEO, Curt Lane last year.

Acadia has not announced what it intends to do with the property nor the smaller office quarters next door. Mount Regis opened a new residential facility in 2017 on the campus near where the YMCA is located, across Texas Street from the Salem Civic Center. It rents a building on College Avenue where counseling is done.

Mount Regis and the crest of the hill on which it sat was such a landmark that that area of South Salem almost incorporated as the Town of Mount Regis until Salem annexed the community that formerly was part of Roanoke County.

In a 1930s fire at the hospital, the damage was estimated at $2,500. This time, the Salem Fire Marshal estimated damage at more than $600,000.

It was originally a private home that was expanded to be a private tuberculosis sanitorium until 1939. It became White Cross Hospital for treatment of alcoholism in April 1947.