In Focus: Crews Work to Clear Scene of March Fire in Centralia

Photos by Jared Wenzelburger / jared@chronline.com Sandrini Construction crews work Wednesday morning to fill LeMay shipping containers with debris from the former Papa Pete’s Pizza and Shari’s Restaurant location in Centralia after a fire destroyed the building on Harrison Avenue in early March. Christopher Jackson Jr. was convicted for breaking into the building on Sunday, March 5, lighting a Sterno can on fire and then accidentally knocking it over, spilling the flaming fluid and starting the fire that destroyed the building. He was sentenced last week to three to six months in a court-imposed residential drug offender sentencing alternative inpatient program. The hexagon-shaped building where Papa Pete’s was most recently located originally opened in January 1983 as the 26th restaurant in the Shari’s chain, according to previous Chronicle reporting. Shari’s closed in 2007, but the building remained. Three years later, in June 2010, the Castle Rock-based chain Papa Pete’s Pizza announced it would open a new location in the hexagon-shaped building on Harrison Avenue. At 4,300 square feet, the Centralia location was Papa Pete’s smallest eatery, according to previous Chronicle reporting. The pizza chain operated on Harrison Avenue through February 2022 before permanently closing its Centralia location. According to Lewis County Parcels, the property is owned by Vahan Dinihanian of 933 Harrison Avenue Centralia LLC. About $16,500 is owed in taxes on the property.