09/22/2023
**"Miracle on Main Street"**
We're in the midst of renovating and organizing the new space on Liberty Street in Jamestown. That's been a wild ride after a chaotic forced move from the Greenville building. It'll be months before we're ready for walk-in customers, but Brian is maintaining the EBay store.
Town officials had a fence erected in front of the old site last January after our building was damaged during demolition of the one next to it. They said there was danger of collapse, and the demo foreman told Brian if he heard a big noise that he couldn't identify to "get the f**k out of the building!" The demolition company stopped work after realizing they had shared walls, a common finding in buildings of that age and usually anticipated. The Boro manager said they didn't have money to repair that damage, and then threatened the demolition company with breach of contract if they didn't proceed (their foreman told us that) The Boro solicitor sent us a letter essentially saying so sorry, but not their problem and they were going to continue demolition soon so we needed to vacate ASAP. Thankfully we had a potential buyer who wanted to tear the building down and develop that entire block, and Boro officials knew that plan was in the works. We sought legal counsel who advised us that we had two options--we had a great case if we sued the Boro, the demolition company, etc but it could take several years to resolve and there was no guarantee justice would be served. Or, we could back away, take the offer on the building and swallow the financial hit of getting much less than the cost of a new space and loss of sales. At our age, we couldn't see paying massive legal fees toward a battle we might not win. We scrambled to find another site, outside of Greenville for obvious reasons 🤬. We held an auction and enlisted family and friends to help with the giant move. And as a going away gift, the Boro insisted we pay for a lateral sewer inspection--a fee of $375, which is $100-$125 in any other municipality, for a building that would be demolished.🤬🤬 Hopefully, we'll be able to reopen to the public next spring.
So, what's the miracle? We've avoided driving through downtown Greenville since the move, but I passed through on September 6th. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that the fence in front of our building had been removed! The sidewalk is completely clear. The damaged area is still very prominent, and there doesn't seem to be any type of repair in place. We lost months of revenue because this was supposedly so dangerous, and now it's OK? The Boro won't have to pay for the rest of the demolition next door since our buyers will complete it. They expect to benefit from increased taxes. All in all, they're making out at our expense. Well played, Boro of Greenville, well played!
BTW, the Record Argus ran an article about this last week but didn't address the question we had about why the fence is down now.
See you at the new site in Jamestown!
