Focus turns once again on landlord with troubled history after Albany Park fire guts apartment building, popular brewery, gym

Rubble was still burning from an extra-alarm fire in Albany Park early Monday when questions arose about the landlord of an apartment building that was gutted along with a popular brewery and a gym.

Fire officials say the fire appears to have started outside, under one of two sets of stairs in the gangway between the building and the brewery, the Twisted Hippo.

While they couldn’t say yet what caused the fire, attention has focused once again on Gary Carlson, who has a history of code violations at dozens of properties he owns in the area.

Public records show he was under an order to fix electrical problems at the building in the 4300 block of North Richmond Street. A permit for the work was obtained in January, but it was unclear if the work was completed and inspected.

Displaced residents who gathered on the street and watched their homes burn complained about trash and rowdy neighbors at the building. A state legislator said he had a “bad feeling” about the building.

Anthony Vazquez | Chicago Sun-Times

But the landlord told the Sun-Times he is being falsely accused. Carlson claimed a witness saw the brewery burning before the fire spread to all four floors of his apartment building.

“It’s all about a landlord being guilty until they prove themselves innocent, right?” Carlson said. “As a landlord in the city of Chicago, guilty until you prove yourself innocent instead of the opposite way around. Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

Carlson said he got a message from the daughter of a tenant saying “she saw the Hippo, Hippo whatever it is, burning. And then the fire spread to my building, not the other way around. That’s it.”

He added that the brewery “had the highly flammable materials in there. I don’t blame anybody. But why are they blaming me?”

The owners of the brewery could not be reached about Carlson’s comments. But one of the owners, Marilee Rutherford, told reporters at the scene earlier in the day that tanks of carbon dioxide and nitrogen were inside the building and may have exploded in the fire.

Fire crews were called around 3:45 a.m. and the alarm was quickly raised to a 3-11 as the fire burned through the apartment building, the brewery and Ultimate Ninjas next door.

Fire officials said all the residents were able to escape but a 60-year-old man was taken in serious condition to Swedish Covenant Hospital with smoke inhalation.

Rutherford said someone in the neighborhood alerted her to the fire. “It’s hard to see everything you worked for go up in flames, but I’m just glad my staff and everyone is OK,” she told reporters. “That’s all I’m focused on.”

Twisted Hippo opened in January of 2019 at a site where three other breweries had opened and quickly closed. Rutherford said looking at the charred remains was “a little unreal. It’s hard. It’s going to be hard, but we are lucky to have had it, and we will see how we move forward.”

By the afternoon, an online fundraising effort had collected more than $64,000 to cover Rutherford’s costs from the fire.

Carlson said he was told the city may order his building torn down, though to him it looked like it was “perfectly salvageable.”

He said he was thankful that nobody was hurt and sorry that families were suddenly left homeless. Carlson insisted that he always responded to any issues tenants and neighbors brought to his attention.

“There is absolutely no appreciation factor for landlords,” he said. We’re all money-grubbing ass----- to put off all their maintenance, take the money and run. And nothing can be the further from the truth. “