“We want to keep these businesses in the community and the neighborhood,” Luke Adams, director of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, said last week. “Today we know that the managers of Blooms and the Butcher’s Block are out looking for alternative spaces to rent in the area.
“The fire marshals haven’t concluded their investigation at the original sites yet — they’ll begin after the Labor Day weekend — but the landlords here are nice people, and I think they’ll want to accommodate these landmark businesses in the neighborhood. I think they’ll try to work out a deal.”
Mark Fox, a co-owner of Bloom’s bar and restaurant, is still waiting for the fire department to determine the origin of the fire.
“They haven’t established where it started yet,” he said. “Not that it will make much difference — they have already decided that it was accidental — and so now we’re in the process of organizing our insurance claim.”
One thing is certain, though: there’s going to be a brand new Bloom’s. “We’ll be pretty aggressive about finding a new site; we’re looking at all our options,” Fox said.
The first possibility is to open again in the same location, but the landlord’s intentions aren’t yet clear.
“He may be looking at a lengthy litigation period with his insurance company; we really don’t know what his details are,” Fox said. “It’s possible he may get paid quickly. In that case he may decide to clean the space out and rebuild — which would be great for us, obviously. Or he may decide to level what’s left, rebuild a bigger structure, or maybe even sell the lot. We maintain a good relationship with him and that’s how we know he really hasn’t decided what he’ll do yet. Our second possibility is to look at other sites in the locality.”
Fox was on the premises in the afternoon when the fire broke out.
“Smoke started coming through the vents — anywhere there was an air intake. It filled the place rapidly. There was a lot of talk that there was a kitchen fire at Bloom’s, which wasn’t the case — because I was actually in the kitchen,” he said. “Simultaneously smoke was filling the Dunkin Donuts next door. A police officer was in there buying coffee and it was he who came into our premises and told us to evacuate.”
It’s now apparent that by the time it was discovered the fire had been burning for 10 or 15 minutes. The high humidity on the day kept the smoke close to the ground throughout the blaze.
“The general understanding is that the fire spread through the cockloft to each neighboring premises,” the bar and restaurant owner said.
For Fox, who had overseen Bloom’s renovations recently, it was a heartbreaking sight.
“It was tough, I won’t lie,” he said. “It was hard to watch it burn. But thankfully no one was hurt. What was burned was replaceable, but human life isn’t. It’s made me more determined than ever to get it up and running again,” he said.
A question that has occurred to everyone who has seen or read of the fire is: what will happen to the employees? Thankfully, the news is good. Said Fox: “We are going to place every one of them in alternative employment. A lot of restaurant and bar owners throughout the city have been good enough to call and offer employment of some shape or form. Right now we have placed almost 80 percent of them. We hope to have everyone in jobs by next week. We have a great crew and we want to help them in any way we can.”
As he works with his business partners to restore the landmark bar and restaurant, Fox offered a final word: “We were very well supported in the local community. I want to say a thank you to everyone who did support us and I want them to know that we hope to be back providing a service to the community again soon.”