Leisure Living doesn't let a near-disaster keep it down
A year after fire, Leisure Living settles into new home
Published: June 15, 2009, 12:30 am
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Just over a year ago, fire swept through a warehouse at the rear of Leisure Living’s property on Niagara Street. Firefighters prevented the blaze from spreading and destroying the entire business.
A collection of memories of the incident and the aftermath, in the form of news articles and photographs, are framed on a wall inside Leisure Living’s new home, in the City of Tonawanda.
“In a way it showed we are resilient,” said Bill Marx, who works in custom sales for the pool and pool supplies business and serves as its spokesman.
The effects of the fire disrupted Leisure Living’s business for about six weeks. The company’s phones were knocked out for several days, and it scrambled to catch up with shipments and replacing lost products.
But the business recovered and managed to follow through on a plan it had laid out before the blaze, moving into larger space to accommodate its growth, Marx said.
In early 2008, the company bought the former Hy-Grade Distributors’ warehouse in the City of Tonawanda, just north of the Youngmann Highway. By the end of last year, Leisure Living had moved in, keeping its Niagara Street site for overflow stock.
Its new home on Main Street is about twice as large as its former location, with more wide-open warehouse space to stock and retrieve products. The vast majority of Leisure Living’s orders come from outside the region, driven by the company’s Web site.
With a total of 14 docks, shipments move in and out more efficiently, Marx said. At the Niagara Street location, which had less dock access, trucks often had to wait their turn, slowing the flow of activity.
Leisure Living has been owned by the Gerspach family since it was founded as Island Pools 51 years ago. It sells pools, chemicals and a variety of accessories and equipment, such as solar covers and pumps.
The company employs about 130 people, similar to the number at the time of the fire. Most of them stayed with the company when it moved to Tonawanda.
Last year’s three-alarm blaze struck at the height of the shipping season for Leisure Living. Marx recalled how the business operated in the days after the fire.
“The big thing was the teamwork,” he said. “Something like this can be devastating to people. Instead, people put in extra hours.”
Manufacturers who supply Leisure Living also reached out with offers of help, Marx said.
The fire, which ignited June 2, 2008, proved difficult to extinguish. More than 200 firefighters were at the scene over a 24-hour period. The fire caused an estimated $10 million to $15 million in damage.
Investigators list the cause as undetermined. “We eliminated everything from the electrical to the mechanical,” said Buffalo Fire Lt. Sal Colangelo.
That left what fire investigators call the “human element,” Colangelo said. One theory was careless smoking by an employee in the warehouse was to blame, but nothing could be proven, he said.
Marx declined to say how much the company received from its insurance settlement, other than to say it was “not as much as we would have liked.” As part of the claims process, lots of employee time had to be devoted to documenting what was lost, he said.
A year after the fire, Leisure Living has more growth plans in mind. It acquired a former school building that sits in front of its Main Street property and plans to convert it to offices, Marx said.
Meanwhile, its Niagara Street property is for sale. The rubble of the warehouse at the back was cleared away, leaving an empty lot in its place.
Though the fire happened just a year ago, to Marx it sometimes seems even longer, given the other changes Leisure Living has gone through. “You deal with an obstacle like that, you’re better for it.”
mglynn@buffnews.com
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