Downtown Merchants Mopping Up
After Pipe Breaks, Floods Buildings
By LIBBY CUDMORE • Special to allotsego.com
ONEONTA – Despite three inches of water soaking the back rooms of the Eighth Note on the morning of Christmas Eve, owners Ruth, Fred and Chris Cleveland still hurried to make holidays bright for their customers. “The room where we had all our Christmas layaways had the worst damage,” said Ruth. “But our employees ran in there and saved every one of them.”
Sometime after 11 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 23, a sprinkler burst in the attic of 248 Main Street, which houses the Autumn Café, Razzle Dazzle, the Eighth Note and several student apartments. Early the next morning, a passerby saw water pouring under the doors of the storefronts and alerted the fire department. “The guy that delivers the paper came to us and said, ‘do you know there’s water running out of your building’?” said owner Peter Clark. “My guys were on the scene by 8:05, getting the water shut off.”
“When I opened the store, it looked like it was raining all over everything in the back room,” said Eighth Note employee Tyler Merrill. “Our books were sopping wet, our digital pianos were destroyed. I just started dragging equipment to the front of the store.”
The front of the store was clean and clear, but when the water stopped, the practice rooms, the office and many antique instruments, including a 1913 Steinway piano, two rare Ukelins and a Hawaiian Tremoloas, were ruined. “We used to display them to show students,” she said. “They’re so beautiful, but it’s gone now.”
The five lesson rooms had only been opened for three months before the flood, and now, 180 students are displaced. “We’ll hold some lessons at the First Presbyterian Church and some in a space next door,” she said.
All in all, Ruth believes the flood caused at least $50,000 worth of damage. “So much of it is repairs,” she said. “Because of the humidity, we’ll have to restring all the guitars, clean and retune all the pianos. It’s expensive.”
Clark hopes to have the lesson rooms ready to work in within a week, and the store hasn’t lost one day of sales as the cleanup begins around them. “Christmas Eve, we sold a digital piano and a guitar,” said Ruth. “The next day, we sold two guitars and a trumpet.”
Four other apartments in the building were also damaged, and Deb North, owner of Razzle Dazzle, will shut her store until spring while repairs are done to the floors and ceilings.
“Peter has been so supportive,” said North. “But right now, it’s just waiting and cleaning.”
At the Autumn Café, Tim Johnson had to close the restaurant for two days while they mopped and disposed of damaged food. “We had to wait for the health inspector to tell us we could open again,” he said. “It was horrible. We were closed Christmas Eve, Christmas day and most of Friday, but we were able to open for dinner Friday night.”
The extent of the damage remains to be seen; Johnson worries that floor repairs will force him to close for a week. “I have 23 employees,” he said. “They might not be able to work for a week.”
It’s not the first flood Ruth or Johnson have cleaned up after. “Back in the early 80s, the old landlord turned off the heat in the upper floors and a pipe burst,” he said. “But that wasn’t as bad as this.”
“We’ve never had a loss like this,” said Ruth. “Fred and I thought we should hang it up, but bur customers begged us not to go out, and Chris wants to run this business. We have a purpose here, and we are absolutely open.”