Home/Dental Office to be Demolished, New Home Coming

No homeowners will succeed the three generations of Cliffords who lived at 3004 Sutton Boulevard in Maplewood. Instead, the property will be sold and the building demolished to make way for a new house.

The . The fire also took generations of .

The home’s owner, Donna Clifford, has retired to Florida.

“My mother is 77 this year,” Doug Clifford, her son, said. “She’s not up to rebuilding. It’s the end of that chapter.”

Donna Clifford is in the process of selling the property. She has a buyer, and the closing will occur after the remains of her home are demolished and removed, leaving a level, empty lot.

All the utilities need to be disconnected first. The demolition could be several weeks away.

Donna Clifford’s son, Doug Clifford, said the lot was sold to an architect who plans to build a home. His mother feels good about it, he said.

“She had an offer from a commercial guy who was going to try to get a variance, and put some kind of an office, blocky and boxy,” he said. “I think she took an offer that was below his so she could keep it a home.”

He added: “It sounds like there’s going to be some type of nice home there, that will carry on the feel.”

Doug Clifford said his mother will drive to Maplewood from Florida to be there for the demolition. She plans to work with the contractor to salvage what she can from the house.

He said there might not be much left.

“The house kind of imploded on itself,” he said. “The chimney fell in, then the attic burned down, then it all fell into the middle of the house. A lot of that stuff is smoke and fire damaged.”

The future of Dr. Wayne Fisher’s , which served generations of locals on the first floor of the house, is up in the air.

“He’s still considering options, so I can’t give you a definite answer,” Fisher’s wife, Carol Fisher, said.

Doug Clifford said losing the dental office is the real tragedy.

“Wayne lost all his patient records,” he said. “The business was really decades and decades of generations of families going there.”

Rachel Boxderfer, the real estate agent who sold the house, was one of Fisher’s patients.

“I loved that building,” she said. “I loved the dentist office. I live in the city of St. Louis, but that’s been my dentist and my parents’ dentist and my children’s dentist for majority of my life. I know them well.”