It’s the start of the busiest shopping season of the year and San Marco Books and More is back on its feet just in time for Black Friday and Small Business Saturday.
Manager Desiree Bailey said all she wanted was to open for Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. On Friday, the store is filled with books and customers.
“As long as we can open on Black Friday that’s fine," she said.
Precious books at the bookstore, located at 1971 San Marco Blvd., were destroyed on Nov. 2 after a fire at the Beaches Diner next door filled the shop with smoke and soot.
“Our store filled with smoke,” Bailey says.
All of the new books were ruined. A total of about 80% of their inventory gone.
The store quickly got to work on salvaging what they could. Bailey had to call several remediation companies to look at the damage.
"We had to wait for a different remediation company to come in and assess what could be done, what could be kept, what we needed to do," Bailey said.
The store has been open for 47 years. It's been in in-store manager Desiree Bailey's family for over 20 of those years. This Thanksgiving, there is one thing she's incredibly thankful for.
"At least we’re open," Bailey said. "One of the firemen had told me that if it had been another ten minutes we may have lost everything. On the whole building. So I’m happy that did not happen, that no one got hurt."
Since the fire, the bookstore has worked quickly to restore all of their used books.
The painstaking task, "was like cleaning out your junk drawer, your garage, and your backroom all at the same time," Bailey said.
Despite losing everything, the store is back on its feet.
The walls have a fresh coat of paint and the floors re-carpeted. New books have piled in the last few weeks, bringing the San Marco bookstore back to life.
Though, they still have a ways to go to be fully stocked, which will “take us awhile to rebuild, but we’ll just go from there," Bailey said.
The bookstore is hosting authors for Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. They're asking for the local community to come out and show their support.
The Beaches Diner is still closed until April, and with a lot of their foot traffic derived from the diner, they're hoping the community will come out and visit all of the shops on their side of the street that were affected by the fire.
"I’m hoping for sustained support through the reopening," Bailey said.
The bookstore will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Black Friday and Small Business Saturday.
The Wardroom, which also closed because of the fire, has also reopened in time for Black Friday weekend.