David Culbertson was planning to demolish his building, but this wasn’t what he had in mind.

"Last week we did the inspection to demolish it," he said. "We were going to try to salvage the wood."

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Culbertson, 34, is the owner of the packing warehouse at 411 S. Front St. that caught on fire late Tuesday.

Culbertson said he was surprised that evening when he looked down at Medford from his hillside home on South Stage Road.

"I walked out of my house and saw it," said Culbertson. When he realized what neighborhood the fire was in, he got in his car.

As he neared the blazing building, reality sunk in: "I realized it was toast."

Culbertson is a third-generation owner of Crystal Springs Packing, a pear orchard company founded by his grandfather, Paul Culbertson. The Culbertsons sold the packing business, which was located in the Front Street building, but still have some orchards throughout the Rogue Valley.

"My father (Dwayne) and I are owners, but we’ve been in the process of selling bits and pieces," he said.

The fire damaged the original warehouse and a concrete addition, both 70 by 100 feet and four stories, as well as a smaller, 25-foot-high concrete building that’s also 70 by 100 feet. The buildings cover the block between 11th and 12th streets and Front Street and the railroad tracks.

According to assessor’s records and fire maps from the Southern Oregon Historical Society, the brick building was constructed in 1920 and purchased by the Medford Precooling and Storage Co. in 1927. Pinnacle Packing bought the building in 1935, when the concrete addition was constructed. The shorter concrete building was built in the 1960s, and Crystal Springs purchased all three in 1982 and used them for cold storage for pears until 1995. The equipment and a anhydrous- ammonia cooling system were used for cooling other companies’ adjacent buildings until 2001.

The system, although disassembled, was still in the buildings and also lost in the fire.

"There’s a lot of heavy-gauge steel piping, motors, coolers, all the equipment that goes into cooling," said Culbertson.

He said he didn’t think it was the equipment that started the fire.

Kenneth Brown Construction had just inspected the building last week, and Brown said there was nothing inside that was a danger.

"Matter of fact, they had everything shut down so there were no fire hazards," said Brown.

"It was in the process of being demolished," said Jackson County Appraiser David Arrasmith. "I was just in there Aug. 8."

With 4-by-4-foot wood beams and three floors made of solid 2-by-12-inch planks laid on edge and nailed together, there was a lot of old wood in the brick building, said Arrasmith.

"It was appraised in 1994 at $600,130," he said. "This year, I was going to drop it to $224,950 because they were gutting it out. It was unusable."

Culbertson, who had recently put the property on the market, was asking $350,000 for the property and the 1960-era building. He said he was planning to tear down the original structure and addition.

"It would cost about $200,000 to bring the building to the ground," said Culbertson. "There was maybe $100,000 to $150,000 in reclaimable materials. The building would have been a net loss to bring it to the ground."

Culbertson said he was awaiting word from his insurance company on possible coverage.

Reach reporter Meg Landers at 776-4481 or e-mail mlanders@mailtribune.com.