Unusual 'highway house' off I-96 burns to the ground in weekend blaze
WINDSOR TWP. — The "highway house," a one-of-a-kind, three-story structure that earned its nickname thanks to its close proximity to Interstate 96, was destroyed by fire early Sunday morning.
The home off Billwood Highway has been vacant for decades, ravaged by time and vandals.
At about 4:53 a.m. Sunday, the outdoor surveillance cameras at Matt Jankoviak's business, Dimondale Canoe & Kayak, across the street from the highway house, started recording, Jankoviak said.
The video showed the house fully engulfed in flames, Jankoviak said.
"They're solar powered, so they don't record continuously, but they start recording when they pick up movement and that fire got big enough and hot enough that even from that far away, it started recording it," he said.
The devastating fire came more than three decades after Asim Al-Azzawi, an engineer who immigrated to the United States from Iraq in 1951, obtained a permit to start building it in 1991. He never finished the home and died in 2011. His brother Amad Al-Azzawi, who lives out of state, has been trying to sell the property ever since.
Early morning fire under investigation
William Fabijancic Jr., assistant chief for the Windsor Township Fire Department, said firefighters responded to the blaze at 9975 Billwood Hwy. after they received a call about it at 4:55 a.m. Sunday. Investigators aren't sure how or when the blaze started, he said.
"When we got there it was down on the ground," he said.
The fire is under investigation "for cause and origin," Fabijancic said.
The house had no gas or electricity at the time of the fire, he said. He declined to comment further on the investigation.
"We're still pulling a lot of stuff trying to get other information from different sources," Fabijancic said.
A home adjacent to the property was on fire when firefighters arrived at the property, he said. It sustained significant damage, but no one was injured at either property.
'We lost everything'
Amad Al-Azzawi, who lives in Alabama, couldn't be reached Wednesday.
Mthaki Abdulkarim, his wife, said via phone that they learned about the fire from Jankoviak, who called them with the news on Sunday.
"The house, there was no power to it, no gas, no water, but the house burned," Abdulkarim said. "I don't know. It looks like somebody did it."
Fabijancic said officials have not yet determined the cause of the fire.
The couple had no insurance on the house and had been trying to sell the property for several years, Abdulkarim said.
"We lost everything," she said. "We will try to sell the lot now."
In 2021 Emad Al-Azzawi told the State Journal that a couple who agreed to buy the highway house on a land contract in 2018 had since lost possession of the property because they weren't making monthly payments.
The towering, cream-colored house sat on just under an acre near the Grand River and overlooked the interstate where, about 100 feet away, vehicles rushed past it daily. Each level of the highway house seemed stacked on top of the last.
In 2021, an Eaton County official said occupying the home was made difficult by the unconventional way it was built. It was unclear if Asim Al-Azzawi ever obtained the necessary permits to build it.
During a walk-through of the structure two years ago, a reporter noted the home's continued deterioration. Most of the home's windows were broken. Shards of glass littered a crumbling wooden side porch and weeds were growing out of the debris and dirt filled the roof's eaves. Inside trash filled the rooms and graffiti covered the walls.
Jankoviak said the highway house had been in decline for decades.
Its loss is "sad because it was a cool house, but at the same time, it was abandoned and it was in rough shape," he said.
Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GrecoatLSJ .
READ MORE:
Unusual 'highway house' off I-96 is for sale again and in danger of foreclosure
Quirky, abandoned 'highway home' in Dimondale has new owners, new hope
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Unusual 'highway house' off I-96 burns to the ground in weekend blaze
