Cleanup begins in Reading Outlets fire; owner says renovation to take a year

The early morning hours of Oct. 18 proved to be a true test for Shuman Development Group of Reading after a fire ripped through the six-floor Reading Outlets Center.

The blaze threatened to destroy the company’s near-completed $14 million renovation of the iconic building.

“Almost a decade of my life is invested in this,” Alan Shuman, owner of Shuman Development Group, said a few days after the fire. “It was going great; there was a lot of interest in it and it was looking like a huge home run of a project.”

But it’s not a strikeout, either. Thanks to insurance, cleanup was set to begin last week and last for a couple of months. Construction is expected to resume in the early summer and finish next fall, Shuman said.

The fire started in the north side of the second floor of the building at the corner of Eighth and Oley streets and has been ruled an arson, Shuman said. Damage is an estimated $12 million.

The building is the last of the 10 that Shuman’s group bought in the outlet district since 2006, totaling about 640,000 square feet. The group has already redeveloped, sold and leased more than 2 million square feet of commercial property in downtown Reading in the last 10 years.

“It is certainly a tremendous credit to Alan’s tenacity and his belief in the city of Reading and Berks County,” said Jon Scott, president and CEO of Greater Reading Economic Partnership. “One can only admire his talent and fortitude in forging ahead under difficult circumstances, and not letting the ubiquitous bad guys get him down.”

It was at 2:52 a.m. on that autumn Saturday when multiple calls were received about the fire, according to the Reading Fire Co. emergency call history. When fire trucks arrived, flames were shooting from several windows and the roof. Within an hour, the fire escalated so much that help was called in from six other municipalities.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives posted a $10,000 reward in an effort to find and prosecute the arsonist(s). And Shuman said he is throwing in $10,000 to double the reward.

“We have brought in the best in the business to handle the investigation to make sure that the people responsible for the destruction are brought to justice …” Reading Mayor Vaughn Spencer said.

Although it is good news that the building can be saved and the project can continue, it comes with the risk that Shuman could lose some or all of the previously committed tenants for the building, who may not be able to weather through the yearlong wait.

“We will help him [Shuman] all we can to keep existing tenants and find new ones,” Scott said.

Shuman’s commercial and residential plan for the building’s 120,000-square-foot property is partially funded through the New Markets Tax Credit – tax incentives that subsidize efforts to spur revitalization of low-income and impoverished communities.

The building has heavy timber beams, and some of the masonry arches were damaged. Some of the beams collapsed and will be rebuilt.

Structural columns on the north side of the second floor, the entire sixth floor and roof have fire damage, and the remainder of the building sustained water damage, Shuman said.

The original plans for the 42,000 square feet of commercial space in the building included a child care center, pharmacy medical group, furniture rental store and farmers’ market.

The day care has been temporarily moved to space across the street in the shopping center built by Shuman’s group, but he does not know if the center will relocate to the outlet center building once it is complete.

“We are seeing who can hang on another year, who we can put in another space, and who we are going to lose,” Shuman said.

The top four floors will still become 69 market-rate apartments. Shuman said the company was about to show the finished apartments until the fire occurred.

Once complete, the entire project is anticipated to bring nearly 60 construction jobs and 90 or more permanent jobs.

“I have gotten a huge amount of support throughout the whole county,” Shuman said.

“But, the hard part of it is figuring out what I am going to do in 2015; I have two large projects scheduled, and every month that I have to put them off it will carry costs with it.”

Source: LVB.com