Monday, September 3, 2007

Huge Bummer in Mount Airy

A fire that began in one of my favorite restaurants, Laurienzo's Brick Oven Café, destroyed two buildings and severely damaged a third in historic Mount Airy. An estimate $4 Million worth of damage was done before the fire was extinguished. To compound the misery, there were several apartments over the restaurant and nearby buildings, the residents of which have obviously been displaced.

This fire is especially inopportune because Downtown Mount Airy was really starting to become vibrant. In addition to Laurienzo’s, there was a neat coffee shop and a really cool store called “Retro Metro” that had all kinds of cool reproductions of vintage household items. There was also a store that specialized in trendy clothes and skateboard items. Luckily, the gun shop is on the opposite side of the street and was unharmed. Yay, firearms!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Huge bummer, indeed. Even before its recent resurgence, downtown Mount Airy was a great place. If there's any silver lining in this, it's that several buildings, including the one I used to work in (a former hotel/brothel) and Town Hall, survived the blaze. Here's hoping they rebuild quickly and keep their momentum.