A week after the 40-year-old local branch of Stratham Tire was destroyed in a fire, the company bought a new location in Concord and hopes to reopen for business within two months.
Its future home is next door to the old location at 92 Manchester St. – a brick-fronted building with large garage doors on the side. Stratham Tire President Denise Littlefield said the current tenants – including Phoenix Auto Body, Mirror Mirror Hair Salon and New Freedom Vape – have been notified that they’ll eventually have to relocate.
Littlefield said there was never any question that the family-owned and New Hampshire-founded tire shop would return to Concord, one of the most profitable of its 18 locations.
“When you have a store as important to us as the Concord market is, the last thing you want to be is down for a period of three to six months or a year,” she said. “If you’re out of a market for months on end, you lose your customers.”
To build anew on the old lot, where the 1952 building was reduced to rubble, would have meant a lapse of service of about a year, she said. Stratham Tire has been a fixture in Concord since the company expanded to the capital in 1976 with its seventh store, according to a company history posted online.
It’s unclear at this point what will happen at the 84 Manchester St. lot after the blue-and-white building there crumbled under the heat of an early morning fire last week before any employees reported in. Littlefield said she still doesn’t know what caused the blaze.
Firefighters said at the scene last week that the blaze was so powerful – fueled by readily burning tires – that it might be difficult to determine a cause. No injuries were reported.
Ten fire departments responded to the scene beginning about 6 a.m., as a plume of thick, black smoke reached into the sky, visible from miles around.
Concord Deputy Fire Chief Sean Toomey didn’t return a phone message Friday.
The same day, store manager Randy McClintock stood in the parking lot and spoke with the manager of the auto body shop next door, learning that his building was for sale, Littlefield said. By 2:30 p.m., Littlefield said she was in touch about the deal that she said became a “win-win” for both parties.
As quickly as she began to negotiate, the employees were accomodated even faster, she said. The store’s 10 employees were offered normal hours at other branches starting the same day as the fire.
“Their biggest concern was obviously their livelihood, their tools that they lost in the fire,” she said.
The business is working to compile lists of all the personal property that was destroyed in the fire for the insurance company, Littlefield said, including three customer vehicles.
Among the irreplaceables was McClintock’s wall of accolades from his years as a varsity girls’ basketball coach at Concord High School, Littlefield said.
“It was just statue after statue, award after award, rows and rows of all the years he coached,” she said.
Stratham Tire’s founder, Lionel Labonte, began the business as a small gas station in Stratham in 1961. His five children have managed the 150-employee business since he died of brain cancer in 2014.
Labonte pruned unprofitable locations over the years, Littlefield said, but the Concord location was untouchable.
“When the Concord store burned, there was not even a question that we were going to replace that store,” she said. “Did we ever consider not reopening? Never. It was just a matter of when.”
The fact that the company closed on a new building within a week, she said, is a testament to its commitment to the community.
“God never gives us more than we can handle, and we’re doing the very best we can,” she said.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)