Flooded-out Forest Lake Fabrics reopened in temporary new digs

Had Michael Marsha been standing in the middle of his Forest Drive fabric shop at the peak of the October flood, he would have been a foot or more underwater.

High-water marks still scar the inside showroom and windows across the front of his business — the windows that weren’t blown out, that is, by an angry Gills Creek.

The meandering, normally placid little creek became a debris-strewn, mighty rushing stream during the early morning hours of Oct. 4, propelling surfing that ranged from railroad ties to trees through the rear wall of his two-story fabric shop, out the front wall and windows, and onto Forest Drive.

Closed since that October night, Forest Lake Fabrics reopened Jan. 1 in a temporary location two doors from the permanent store. Marsha and Indigo Construction owner Ryan Horton are hashing out plans to seek clearance to renovate the two-story, 14,000-square-foot structure.

“This building will be waterproof,” Marsha said of his plans for the 46-year-old building that his business has occupied since 1994. “We’re going to brick up 8 feet (from the ground) and we’re going to have waterproof doors, so if anything freak ever happens again here, I won’t have the devastation.”

Started by his grandfather five decades ago, Forest Lake Fabrics has been part of the Columbia business scene since 1964. Marsha took the business over in 1990 and moved it four years later from the old Forest Lake Shopping Center when it was torn down to the store’s current location.

A lifelong Forest Acres resident, Marsha said he’s not afraid to rebuild his business in the same location. Over the years, he has seen Trenholm Road flooded probably 20 times, he said – bad enough to make the road impassable each time. The store, too, has seen some “scary times” over the years, Marsha noted.

Mega-rainfalls and flash floodings caused those scares, he said, but they never threatened his building. “This building has been here 40 years and (has) never been wet (inside): I can’t be scared of it,” Marsha said.

“I have confidence in Ryan and his engineer that they know what they are doing and that they can get me waterproof,” Marsha said.

Forest Lake Fabrics suffered an inventory loss of about $1 million, with $300,000 in damages to the building, the owner said.

As bad as the storm was, Marsha estimates that his building, whose back parking lot abuts Gills Creek in the crux of a bend in the waterway, likely would have only been under 3 feet of water but for the large pieces of debris deposited in the creek from further upstream.

If the back side of Forest Lake Fabrics had been fortified by brick, it might have withstood the water’s deluge, Marsha said. Three feet of floodwater would possibly have damaged some inventory, but it wouldn’t have been catastrophic, he said. “The blunt-force trauma the building took from the debris that came down after the dam broke really busted out the back of the building.”

Several hundred bolts of fabric made their way from the shop on Forest Drive, just east of Trenholm Plaza Shopping Center, down Gills Creek nearly to Lake Katherine, he said. “I had one lady to call me the week before Halloween to say she found some juvenile prints fabric down by the sewer treatment plant and she wanted to know if she could (keep) it,” Marsha said.

The caller said she intended to make Halloween costumes for the kids out of the fabric, Marsha said.

Once reconstruction plans are completed, they must be approved by the city of Forest Acres’ planning department, Horton said. Once approval is granted, construction and retooling should take about 90 days.

The rear of the building will be doubly reinforced and the front facade will be updated and made more attractive, he said.

Even now, four months after the flood, the memories of the wrath of the water remain vivid, said Horton, who was scheduled before the flood to take down Forest Acres’ old town hall building on Gills Creek, just behind Forest Lake Fabrics. Instead, the flood did the job.

“That building started to come apart in the flood and it was projectiles hitting everywhere,” Horton said. “I’ve seen several tornadoes. I did insurance work in the 1980s, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Marsha said his wife, Ginger, did some fabric work out of their home for a while after the flood, but it wasn’t conducive for living and working. The temporary fabric shop is in the former Corma’s Vitamin store on Forest Drive, which will not reopen, according to Marsha.

“We weren’t sure if we were going to come back here,” Marsha said of the Forest Drive location. “We were looking around at other locations.” But Forest Acres is home – and community, he said. The Friday after the flood, 80 people organized by community leaders showed up at Marsha’s shop, some of them with equipment, including Ryan Horton.

In four hours, the 80 people working and using equipment were able to clear out Marsha’s building and the estimated $1 million of flood-ruined bolts of colorful, high-end fabric. That work alone saved Marsha $100,000 in cleanup costs, he said.

Within the next 90 days, Marsha said he expects to purchase 500 to 600 bolts of fabric, which he will store in the upstairs of the store while the downstairs it is being redone. That will give him a good start toward reopening.

“We’re trying to put things in order to get back in business,” Marsha said. “But it was really the community. I really didn’t hire anybody.”

This story was originally published February 6, 2016 at 5:55 PM with the headline "Flooded-out Forest Lake Fabrics reopened in temporary new digs."