by Alissa Skelton

The Crete News

Correction (A portion of this story has been corrected from the original version)

Last month a fire on in 1200 block of Main left Crete residents wondering what exactly caused the fire.

The retail space, formerly the Siedhoff shoe store, next to New Beginnings Thrift caught fire on Dec. 14. Crete fire crews, with mutual aid from Dorchester and Southwest Rural, spent over three hours trying to extinguish the blaze that was reported at 7:43 p.m. 

Fire Marshal Ray Nance still doesn’t know what caused the fire. The fire department reported that the fire was undetermined. The fire was maintained in the basements of the retail space and the neighboring business, Cubas Sportsbar, while New Beginnings suffered smoke damage. 

The whole building, 1215 Main, was condemned at a meeting of the Crete City Council Public Works Committee on Tuesday, Dec. 15. 

Ray Sueper, the city building inspector, said he didn’t exactly know what started the fire either, but suspected that there was a propane or charcoal grill left on in the basement. Sueper said he thought someone was living in the building since there was a grill. 

If there was a tenant, Sueper said there were housing violations. The building had been condemned from residential use in September of 2008 and could not be used for those purposes.

Insurance agent Mike Davidson estimated the total cost of the fire damage to be $100,000.The remediation of New Beginnings Thrift took one week and cost $25,000. The estimate for Cubas Sportsbar hasn’t been issued. 

“Cubas suffered the most damage so I think it will cost more,” Davidson said. 

New Beginnings closed for one week to treat the building for smoke damage but the store still smells of smoke. The smoke damaged the thrift store’s clothing located upstairs. 

“We had to do the best we could because the merchandise wasn’t covered by our insurance,” New Beginnings store manager Crystal Moorhead said. “We didn’t want to sell our smoke clothes for full price.”

The store sold the damaged clothes for 50 cents. Moorhead said she hasn’t talked to Carmello Lopez, the owner of the building where the fire started. She said he stopped by the thrift store last week to shop.

Sueper met with Lopez to discuss his options. Lopez couldn’t be reached for comment, but Sueper said Lopez was leaning toward rebuilding instead of demolishing the building. If Lopez chooses to rebuild, he has to meet proper building code standards. 

“The bar had more damage than we did,” Moorhead said. “I guess you can say we were lucky to only have smoke damage.”