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Bangor Market Owner Hopes to Reopen

Posted on: Thursday, 23 March 2006, 09:01 CST

By Doug Kesseli, Bangor Daily News, Maine

Mar. 23--BANGOR -- For generations, Young's Market has been a fixture on the corner of Ohio and Court streets. But after Monday's fire, the future of the store is not so certain.

The blaze heavily damaged the neighborhood corner market.

"We're waiting to hear from the insurance adjuster," owner Scott Leadbetter said Wednesday. "Until then, we don't know."

Leadbetter, whose family runs a chain of four convenience stores in the area, said that if it is financially feasible, they will want to reopen the store.

"Depending on the cost, we would like to have a store there," he said. "It's been doing pretty well there."

For now, the store and the eight apartments in the building have been placarded by the city as unusable. American Red Cross officials have said 15 people were displaced from the apartments, which had smoke, fire and water damage as a result of the fire. The blaze began when a loose connection in the aging electrical system became overheated, according to investigators.

The market is more than 100 years old, according to Leadbetter, and the electrical system was pre-World War II vintage, Bangor Code Enforcement Officer Dan Wellington said Wednesday.

Wellington said it may be possible to rebuild the store, but the damaged structure will have to be brought up to code. That would require modern wiring and fire stops inside the walls. Without such stops, fire can run unimpeded through the walls and spread quickly, as it did in Monday's blaze. Firefighters reported chasing the fire in sections of the building.

Officials said despite the heavy damage, it was fortunate the fire was discovered when it was.

A clerk working Monday night smelled smoke and saw it coming from the ceiling, then called 911. Had the fire happened after hours, it likely would have had more time to spread.

"Someone was right there to alert not only the Fire Department but also the tenants," Wellington said.

Leadbetter credited Bangor firefighters for effectively containing the fire as well as they did.

"There's no reason that thing shouldn't have gone right to the ground," he said. "They did a heck of a job."

The owner also praised the Red Cross for quickly coming to the aid of his displaced tenants.

Young's Market has strong memories for Paul Young, 75, of Hermon, whose mother and father bought the market from A&P in 1945. The Hermon resident worked there as a young man and ran it when his father retired in the 1960s, selling it to Leadbetter about 14 years ago.

Young was at what remained of the store the morning after the fire to see the damage for himself.

"I was dismayed," said Young, who when he was 24 years old worked "my butt off" doing anything that was needed at the store, whether it was cutting meat, stocking produce or making deliveries.

"A lot of memories," Young said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Bangor Daily News, Maine

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine)

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