FORT SMITH — Owners of the popular Fort Smith restaurant Calico County, which closed after a fire one month ago, hope to reopen by June.
The restaurant at 2401 S. 56th St. was heavily damaged a month ago this week when oily rags in a hamper in the laundry room spontaneously ignited, restaurant co-owner Scott Blair said.
Fire officials have said the fire caused an estimated $400,000 worth of damage. The fire department determined the fire to be accidental, Blair said.
Since then, Blair, co-owner Gerald Laroche, insurance representatives and architects have been working on a plan to resurrect the restaurant.
Blair said he and Laroche want to reopen the restaurant at the same location where it has been since 1984. They will decide in the next couple of weeks whether to raze the structure and build fresh or renovate the existing building, he said.
In the meantime, insurance is allowing Calico County to pay its staff of 60 employees, Blair said. The pay does not include servers’ tips, which accounts for a large portion of their pay, he said.
“Only one employee has told us he’s not coming back and we’re very pleased with that,” Blair said.
The restaurant’s staff is sticking together, Blair said. The restaurant continued its tradition and held a Christmas party earlier this month at a local bowling alley, serving pizza and giving away gifts.
Employees of a competitor, Buffalo Wild Wings at 6550 Rogers Ave., donated gifts to the 27 children of Calico County employees.
“It’s comforting to know your competitor is this compassionate,” Blair said.
Buffalo Wild Wings General Manager Joey Johnson said his staff came up with the idea to help out the restaurant’s counterparts at Calico County.
Johnson said he and his staff hope they would get the same response from a competitor if they were in the same situation as the Calico County employees.
“We compete for customers,” he said. “But in the end, we all come from the same roots.”
A manager at Calico County put together a list of the employees with children and their ages and the Buffalo Wild Wings staff was able to come up with two gifts for each child, Blair said. The children also got stockings filled with candy and other goodies.
More than half of the restaurant sustained damage in the fire, Blair said, which means architectural plans willbe required and the restaurant will have to be brought up to current building and other codes.
Wally Bailey, the city’s director of development services, said building, plumbing, electrical and mechanical codes are constantly updated. When a building sustains more than 50 percent damage, he said, restoring it is no longer considered a repair but new construction, which requires architectural plans and upgrading to current codes.
The owners salvaged whatthey could from the Calico County dining room, which was filled with antiques and old signs and other displays that gave the restaurant an old-time country atmosphere.
Blair said Service Master has collected the decorations that could be salvaged, cleaned them and placed them in storage.
Wooden tables in the dining room were destroyed but - surprisingly to Blair - the vinyl booths were saved, he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/28/2012