Demolition Begins... Out With Old.
Wednesday December 19th, 2012
Although the fire we experienced was difficult it pales in comparison with the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families and the community affected by the horrific shooting that occurred there last week. We received support from all over and I can tell you that it was very comforting. I urge you to reach out to the community of Newtown, Connecticut and give them your support.
Special thanks to Jim Williams, owner of Baytowne Hyundia and BayCity Kia of Barrie for lending us office furniture to equip our Parts and Sales offices. We now have three office trailers provided by Atco Structures & Logistics that accommodate our Sales Team, Parts & Accessories staff and our Accounting group. The final office trailer was delivered today to house our Accounting staff and our Chairman, Dave McKee. Our Business Office staff has been relocated to the Fina Station (located near our entrance on Hwy 11). This building primarily acted as storage but it has now been upgraded to accommodate staff with an improved heating system, phone system and access to our network and the internet.
Last week, the Township of Oro-Medonte issued the permit for demolition of the remains of The Hitch House main building. Morris Shelswell & Sons was selected by the insurance company to perform the demolition and clean up. Today they began by removing the gardens and landscape stone that bordered the front of the motorhome showroom. This afternoon they started to remove some of the original roof structure including the twisted steel trusses. Thanks to the staff of Morris Shelswell & Sons for locating and recovering the last of our antique gas pumps. Hopefully we can have both pumps restored.
Once the building demolition is complete we will have access to our well. Our current plan is to access the well via a trench from our Service Centre. This will provide water to our bays, appliances as well as our waiting temporary bathroom trailer. The staff is really looking forward to saying goodbye to the "Johnny on the Spots".
Working through the rebuilding process we have come to realize the little things that we took for granted. We are currently working on a replacement key project. Every motorhome comes from the manufacturer with two sets of keys. In order to accommodate demonstrations of our motorhomes it is necessary for the keys to be accessible by our sales staff. The second set of keys for all inventoried motorhomes was located in a locked metal filing cabinet in a secure storage room behind a block wall. That block wall acted as a fire barrier. The fire did travel through the roof and this particular room was damaged but for the most part it survived. This was very fortunate for us as the other key sets were completely destroyed. We were able to recover nearly 100% of the secondary set of motorhomes keys. We are replacing the other set of keys for every motorhome and that project is nearly complete. On behalf of The Hitch House we would like to thank the staff of Navistar RV (formerly Monaco RV), Newmar Corp., Pleasure-Way, Thor Industries, Mercedes Benz of Barrie and Barrie Ford for their cooperation in this project.