It took years to bring people back to downtown Mount Airy ? and one night to destroy most of what had drawn them.
Sunday night?s fire, which caused $4 million in damage, gutted the core of the business district the town worked so hard to build.
“Main Street was a family; there was a buzz,” said Rob Scranton, who leased space to businesses in a building he owned.
Scranton already had another building planned next to the one that was razed. Construction was to begin this week. Now, he?s not sure when it will start.
In 2004, Mount Airy received one of 18 Main Street Maryland grants, designed to revive and strengthen the economic potential of traditional main streets and neighborhoods.
Mount Airy received $225,000 this year and set aside $24,000 of its own money to renovate the 80-year-old Main Street buildings? facades, lighting and parking lots, said Kelly Ziad, the town?s planner and Main Street manager.
She acknowledged that it took years to pack the sidewalks on weekend nights and “make the downtown the heart of the town, the way it used to be,”
“I don?t want to say we were spinning our wheels,but obviously it takes time,” she said.
The fire set back those efforts, destroying six businesses, damaging another and displacing five families from their apartments.
The destroyed stores plan to reopen down the street in trailers in a few weeks.
Meantime, some have found help from neighboring businesses.
Miracles on Main Street Hair, for instance, opened its doors to Do-or-Dye, which lost its building in the fire.
This is not the first time Mount Airy?s been devastated by fire, though.
To lifelong residents, memories still burn of the blaze at the old wood mill on Main Street in 1969.
It took three days to extinguish, said Doug Alexander, who lived
on Main Street and is now spokesman for the Mount Airy Fire Company.
The fire company was created in 1925, after three infernos, each of which destroyed Main Street, said Mayor Frank Johnson said.
“We know how to come together,” Johnson said. “We know how to do this.”
