Last year August 3rd was a Monday and this year a Tuesday. But exactly one year ago today at lunchtime, about 12:20 PM, the still only car dealer in town had an upstairs fire and the offices and the old dry wooden showroom burned almost to the ground in a matter of minutes.It was ultimately in the local paper as being a overheated extension cord in an office that started the fire. The top two photos were taken only minutes apart ans showed how the fire looked at its height.
The last photo was taken during the same time as the fire last year, but today. You can really see that Riverside Auto Center not only rebuilt but also took advantage of the disaster to make their facility better.The old building remnants were gone in about a month and the sales and offices were moved to RV trailers on the lot. The new building was moved to the back of the property and the used cars to the front where the old building was.The new building was framed during winter. It was slowly worked on during the really cold months of winter and this new building enclosed in March. In the early Spring they had a grand re-opening. Too bad though was that GM pulled it as a dealer so they now only sell Dodge, Ram and Chrysler products. Originally they were to remain also a GM, Chevy until the end of this year. Then GM went bankrupt and it all changed.
So no new Chevy's only used and inconvenience for a lot of locals, like us, that have GM products. We do have our 1998 Dodge diesel truck, but the other vehicles are GM products to our 2007 Solstice, that I'd bought from Riverside Auto in 2008. I know that in addition to the economy stalling car sales, the elimination of GM as a product Riverside can sell or even work on has hurt their business that much more.
Now the closest GM dealers are 35 miles South in Sandpoint or about 45 miles East in Libby, Montana.
But they have a nice building now!
Tad
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