Fire guts former Boston Market location, pumps smoke across Arden Arcade
The smell of smoke wafted through portions of Arden Arcade as a fire gutted a former fast-food restaurant Sunday along Fair Oaks Boulevard.
The fire started just after 11 a.m. at the former Boston Market location on the 2300 block of Fair Oaks near University Avenue, according to the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District. Firefighters who first arrived at the scene found smoke pouring from the building and found the roof and a wall to be “compromised,” according to radio dispatch calls reviewed by The Sacramento Bee.
A second alarm was canceled by Metro Fire as personnel moved in to extinguish the blaze from ladder trucks. The response blocked portions of Fair Oaks Boulevard.
No injuries were immediately reported. The cause of the fire was not known.
A spokesman for Metro Fire said crews were expected to remain on scene through Sunday evening “to get full containment and handle any hot spots.”
Breezy conditions — winds at McClellan Airport were observed at 24 mph from the south-southwest — carried the fire’s smoke across most of Arden Arcade and into parts of North Sacramento, North Highlands and Carmichael for a time.
The Boston Market location closed in 2023 after the restaurant’s general manager said food suppliers had not been paid as the brand’s parent company struggled to make ends meet. Fewer than 30 locations remain open in the U.S. — all of the company’s stores in California were sold to another company before being shuttered.
Sacramento County assessor records showed at the time that the Boston Market, which is just east of the Sacramento city line, owed more than $18,000 in taxes dating back to 2022. County records also showed that Starbucks submitted renovation plans seeking to turn the Boston Market into an outlet of the Seattle-based coffee house chain.
Boston Market, formerly Boston Chicken, opened its first location in Newton, a suburb of Boston, in 1985. The rotisserie chicken restaurant became enormously popular by offering freshly made ready-to-eat chicken. By the early 1990s, there were more than 1,200 locations nationwide, including eight in the Sacramento area.
A listing for the $4.2 million property, which states the building occupies 2,330 square feet, suggests that Starbucks has secured a lease on the site until 2039, though renovations had not appeared to have started.
