Published: May 15, 2008 09:33 am         

Donations buoy business owner

Bookstore, photography studio plan to reopen

DANVILLE — It was only the name of Danville Bookworld that went down in flames during the downtown fire in March.

Owners of the longtime business are hard at work with the intent of reopening the well-known store under a new name within a month.

Richard Garrison, owner of the business, said he plans to reopen the store under a new name: Dragon’s Horde.

“We all kind of agreed that Danville Bookworld kind of went down with the fire,” he said. “So we decided to change the name, make it a little more modern and a little more descriptive of everything we sell in the store instead of just the books.”

The large fire, called in at about 10:15 a.m. March 26, started in Danville Bookworld and spread to the neighboring Briars and Brambles, engulfing both businesses.

Firefighters were able to contain the flames from reaching the Dale building to the south and the William Burnside building to the north.

While the name has changed, the downtown location is close to the original store — just two doors down at the corner of North Vermilion and North streets.

The store front — originally the home of BES Designs — is smaller than the burned area once used by the book store, but the downtown location was important to Garrison.

“We just like it down here,” he said. “There’s a lot more walk-ins and stuff than you would get by having a free-standing store.”

Garrison said the rent was “insane” for many of the other locations he inquired about in Danville. Money aside, he liked how the store looked with a first-floor loft as well as a large basement area.

“BES was only a small front room, so a lot of people haven’t even seen what this looked like back here,” he said.

BES Designs reopened as Apparel Unlimited on Georgetown Road next to Attraction Auto Sales.

June apparently is the month for reopening the fire-damaged stores. Garrison has set his reopening for June 9. Meanwhile, his next door business neighbor, Bruce Huff of Bruce Huff Photography, said he’d like to see his business open during the first week of June.

Crews started interior construction this week for Huff’s business, with the intent on more than just restarting a business.

“It would be a shame to have this event happen and put everything back to the same way as it was,” Huff said.

Instead, Huff and building owner Pete Blackmon decided to ditch the carpet and drop ceiling, opting to restore the hardwood floor and use the antique tin ceiling for the first floor.

“The antique values are going to come back,” Huff said. “There are a lot of things in there that are really interesting that you just don’t see anymore.”

This is the second building in downtown Danville claimed by fire in two years. Fire consumed Chittick’s Family Eye Care’s building on Aug. 26, 2006, leaving a vacant lot where the business once stood at 159 N. Vermilion St.

The owners of Briars and Brambles — which also was destroyed in the spring fire — are trying to reopen but have not found a location.

Donations have poured into the former Danville Bookworld as part of drives put together by the city library and Hair Express.

A trailer filled to capacity with books and 12 long boxes carrying comic books sits ready for sale in the store.

The large number of donations — which also included toys and knickknacks — changed Garrison’s mind about the store’s future.

“When this first happened we were almost with the attitude that we’re not going to come back,” he said. “But with all the stuff everybody has been donating, we figured everybody wants us back.”

Customers have kept in contact with Garrison, offering him help and, in the case of one longtime collector, entire comic book collections just to help him get back in business.

“That was probably the one time during this whole fiasco that I almost broke down,” he said of the longtime collector’s offer. “That showed me just how much these guys really wanted me to come back.”