March may be the earliest the doors will reopen at the fire-damaged American Sales building at 167th Street and La Grange Road. But Orland Park will not be without one of its biggest seasonal retailers during the holiday rush.
Since the day of the fire that caused at least $500,000 in damage at his store at 16660 S. La Grange Rd., American Sales owner Bob Jones Sr. has been working with village officials looking for a temporary site.
The store will open this weekend at a temporary site at 15752 S. LaGrange Rd. in the Lakeview Plaza shopping center in the building that formerly housed Best Buy.
Orland Park Village Manager Rich Boehm and Mayor Dan McLaughlin contacted Jones shortly after the early morning fire on Sept. 22.
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“We started looking immediately after the fire [for a temporary site]. We began to identify different locations for [Jones], and it worked out that this was the best site,” McLaughlin said.
Some of the other sites included one in the Orland Place shopping center, but leasing arrangements would not allow it, McLaughlin said.
Currently, Jones is operating out of the store’s outlet center in Tinley Park.
“That is only 12,000 square feet. It’s hard to get 31,000 square feet of merchandise into that space,” Jones said. The temporary site has 34,000 square feet of space on one floor.
The American Sales blaze originated in a fluorescent light fixture under a stairway, Jones said. It spread between the first floor’s hung ceiling and the second level’s cement floor.
“The fire was so warm that it bent some of the steel structures on the second floor and the stairway. We may have to replace some of the steel structures in the building,” Jones said.
The fire caused a minimum of $500,000 in destroyed merchandise and structural damage, but Jones said he isn’t sure that figure is accurate.
“The engineers are going through it right now. It could very well be more once we find out the true extent of the damage,” he said.
American Sales’ inventory includes pools, pool tables, Christmas and other holiday decorations.
The store has been in Orland Park since 1988. Jones has been in business for 40 years in the Chicago area.