Days after HGTV stars Erin and Ben Napier announced they were opening a hotel with their friends in Laurel, Mississippi, they’ve been dealt a stunning setback. On August 26, 2025, a large fire broke out at the newly renovated Heirloom Hotel, a project the Napiers have been working on and filming with their dear friends and business partners, Jim and Mallorie Rasberry (Jim is Erin’s cousin, and Mallorie is her longtime bestie) and Josh and Emily Nowell.
“Today feels like a funeral,” Erin wrote in a social media post, describing how the group “held each other and watched it burning while the brave fire fighters from the Laurel FD worked for hours to get the inferno under control.”
The just-completed Heirloom Hotel had just begun taking reservations and the restoration of its 1930s building, in downtown Laurel, was going to be the focus of a new show in 2026, “Home Town: Inn This Together.” Now, Erin wrote, she’s not sure if fans will ever get a chance to see it.
Erin & Ben Napier Say They Won’t Give Up After Hotel Fire
In Erin’s heartbreaking post on the afternoon of August 26, she wrote, “After so much celebration last week, today my best friends @malraz, Jim, and @joshuanowell lost their labor of love, their dream, @theheirloom.us hotel in an early morning fire. Before they ever even welcomed the first guest. Praise God, no one was inside. We held each other and watched it burning while the brave fire fighters from the Laurel FD worked for hours to get the inferno under control.”
“Today feels like a funeral,” she continued. “But I know these people. They won’t give up here. I don’t know what will happen next or if you’ll ever get to see this @hgtv show now. I don’t know much of anything. Pray for my friends and family, please. It is hard to explain how this reverberates through our town and its progress in many ways. But I know God has a plan for this setback. He always knows the way, even when we don’t.”
The fire broke out on the top floor of the Heirloom Hotel, according to the Laurel Leader-Call, which reported that the hotel went “up in flames” after the “blaze engulfed the former Kress Building” beginning around 5 a.m. The paper said it took several hours for firefighters from five different stations to get under control, but no injuries were reported.
Erin & Ben Napier’s Heirloom Hotel Team Share Their Grief Over Huge Loss
The Instagram account for the Heirloom Hotel also shared a heartbreaking post, with a photo of the Napiers and their friends watching a mural be painted outside that read “Hospitality is our legacy.”
“The weight of this reality is hard to put into words,” the post said. “It’s not about the loss of wood, brick, or paint. It’s about the grief we feel for the countless hands that have worked tirelessly over the past year, breathing life back into this 25,000 square foot space. Every hammer swing, every brushstroke, every late night—this building has been a true labor of love.”
Of that saying on the side of the building, the post noted, “Those words mean more now than ever before. They were never just about us, the many people pouring our hearts into this project; they were about our whole town. They were about the spirit of Laurel.”
Starting in 2016, the Napiers and their circle of friends set out to revitalize their hometown of Laurel, even before “Home Town” became a show, and they have since launched multiple businesses to help the local economy, including the Laurel Mercantile, Erin’s Scent Library, and the Scotsman General Store & Ben’s Woodshop.
The group announced the upcoming opening of the hotel and the HGTV show, scheduled to premiere in early 2026, on August 21. According to a new website for the hotel, reservations for 2026 had just opened.
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