No injuries as fire threatens Houston retail icon
By MIKE GLENN, DANE SCHILLER and DAVID KAPLAN
May 22, 2009, 7:22AM
As flames ripped through one of Houston’s most notable retail icons Thursday night, Gallery Furniture founder Jim McIngvale vowed to rebuild.
But McIngvale, who earned fame with his colorful commercials and self-imposed moniker of Mattress Mack, acknowledged “millions and millions” in dollars of merchandise had been damaged in his flagship store’s warehouse.
To his employees he promised, “We won’t quit.”
This morning he was at his other location at 2411 Post Oak Blvd., which opened earlier this year, preparing to start selling furniture again. True to form, shortly after dawn he was filming a commercial to remind customers of the new Galleria-area location.
McIngvale said it wasn't clear when he could get back into the original location, much less reopen it. In the meantime, he said the store is scouting locations for warehouse space to house several truckloads of furniture on its way.
A few firefighters remained this morning in case of flare-ups. They planned to continue pouring water until heavy equipment could be brought in to pull away the remains of the hulking warehouse and expose any leftover hot spots.
Gallery Furniture — one of Houston’s brightest success stories, known as the store where Mattress Mack will “save you money” — faced serious damage as the four-alarm fire ripped through its warehouse in the 6000 block of the North Freeway near Parker.
But fire crews successfully kept the blaze from spreading to the store’s 100,000-square-foot showroom — the area visited by the public — during a two and a half hour battle. Morning commuters on the freeway slowed to look at the warehouse wreckage.
McIngvale said it was premature to speculate about the fate of the main store’s contents.
“Realistically, we could have a lot of smoke damage,” he said, noting thousands of pieces of furniture must be assessed.
The store was still open to customers when the fire started at 8:40 p.m., but no one was injured.
McIngvale was at the store when the blaze ignited. After an employee alerted him of a possible fire, McIngvale looked at surveillance cameras monitoring the property. “I saw 10-foot flames and realized how serious it was,” he said.
Flames towered over the warehouse’s storage area when fire crews arrived and started dousing it with elevated water cannons.
But the contents of the furniture storage warehouse only increased the flames. “It’s good fuel – it’s basically a big wood fire,” said Houston Fire Department District Chief Tommy Dowdy.
As 150 firefighters worked to contain the blaze, Mayor Bill White showed up to lend his support.
What caused the blaze was not immediately known. One employee said the fire may have started near a generator in the warehouse, but that report has not been officially confirmed, Dowdy sai
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