From the Richmond Times Disaptch column by Bill Lohmann:

The old Carter’s Dry Goods and Notions store in the Oregon Hill neighborhood is not coming down after all. The store, which hasn’t been used as a store since the early 1990s but is a fixture on Idlewood Avenue, was damaged severely by fire in March.

Contractor Jim Poe, a longtime friend of the Carter family, said the insurance money wasn’t sufficient to repair the place, and demolition was imminent, when I talked to him soon after the fire. The family, particularly Jean Carter, who still lives in the house next to the store, was heartbroken.

But Poe called this week, and said he’s in the process of having the building repaired. It won’t be reopened as a store and will continue to be used for storage, but it will still be there.

The reason for the change of direction can be summed up in one word, Poe said:

“Sentimental.”

Carter wanted it saved and the neighborhood wanted it saved, and Poe, who grew up on Oregon Hill and got his first job at the store, also didn’t want to see it gone.

“I just tightened my belt and worked with what insurance money we had,” he said. “It’s actually going to cost me money, but it’s worth every penny. (The Carters) did a whole lot for me growing up, so this is the least I can do.

“I’m happy, Miss Carter’s happy, and the neighborhood’s happy again.”

See previous posts on this by clicking here and here.

It’s been weeks since the fire, and the Times Dispatch’s Bill Lohmann has a good report on the aftermath:

An excerpt:

“A lot of happy days in this store,” said Jean Carter, as we stepped around piles of charred debris with the help of a portable lamp.

Carter’s family owned and operated the small store on Idlewood Avenue in Oregon Hill for almost 70 years until they closed it in 1993, advancing age and a drop-off in business leaving them little choice. Since then, the family has used the building for storage.

On the night of March 6, Carter, who lives in the house, as she always has, at the other end of the backyard from the store, heard sirens that sounded ominously close. She raised the shade on her kitchen window and saw flames shooting from the back of the store and into the top of a nearby tree.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but it apparently started in a shed in the next yard and spread to the store. The fire became so hot it melted the siding on a house across the alley. No one was injured, but the store was damaged beyond repair, so it will have to come down, said Carter and Jim Poe, a longtime family friend and contractor who will oversee the demolition.

“It was like home,” said Carter, who was a baby when her parents opened the store in 1926 and who worked there as a child and off and on through the years. “People in the neighborhood would come in and buy … and sit and talk. It was just a friendly place.

“I’ve tried to keep going,” she said, her voice breaking, “but it’s my life.”

Though the store hasn’t been open for almost 20 years, those of a certain age in Oregon Hill remember it fondly and can scarcely imagine the corrugated metal building gone from Idlewood.