Kindel Furniture Burns

[x99]

http://www.woodtv.co...uilding-on-fire

As soon as I saw the smoke on my way from lunch, I was fairly certain what it had to be, over in that area of town. I hopped in the car and followed the smoke, and so it was ... the old Kindel Furniture building was in the process of burning to the ground. Kindel was, of course, the last of the major fine furniture makers that still did business in Grand Rapids, until vacating the plant about a year or two ago. They make some really nice stuff, too (presently out of their new location on Eastern). It's sad to see this building go, but perhaps a blessing in disguise. I can't imagine what ever would have become of it, otherwise. The whole building was listed at $675,000.00 for over 100,000 square feet (although it was assessed at over $1 million). I'm not sure what you ever could have done with it over in that area of town. A tough sell, to be sure. From the sound of things, they were cutting paint lines out of the building with torches when the fire broke, which sounds suspiciously like "scrapping it out" trying to salvage whatever value was left there.

EDIT: Thinking about this, you've got to ask yourself, who in their right mind cuts lacquer lines out of a building with a cutting torch, especially without verifying that they are, indeed, empty? They thought they were drained? That's about as bright as taking a cutting torch to a gas tank that you "thought" was drained by some other guy. No salvage yard cutting cars apart would ever do something so incredibly stupid. Assuming that was indeed the cause, it's no wonder the whole place became engulfed so quickly. It would have been like dumping gas on the place and then lighting a match. It's truly a shame to see 100 years of history go up in flames because some knucklehead with a torch was apparently too lazy to verify that the lines containing flammable fluid were actually empty before blasting them with a few thousand degrees.

[GRDadof3]

http://www.woodtv.co...uilding-on-fire

As soon as I saw the smoke on my way from lunch, I was fairly certain what it had to be, over in that area of town. I hopped in the car and followed the smoke, and so it was ... the old Kindel Furniture building was in the process of burning to the ground. Kindel was, of course, the last of the major fine furniture makers that still did business in Grand Rapids, until vacating the plant about a year or two ago. They make some really nice stuff, too (presently out of their new location on Eastern). It's sad to see this building go, but perhaps a blessing in disguise. I can't imagine what ever would have become of it, otherwise. The whole building was listed at $675,000.00 for over 100,000 square feet (although it was assessed at over $1 million). I'm not sure what you ever could have done with it over in that area of town. A tough sell, to be sure. From the sound of things, they were cutting paint lines out of the building with torches when the fire broke, which sounds suspiciously like "scrapping it out" trying to salvage whatever value was left there.

EDIT: Thinking about this, you've got to ask yourself, who in their right mind cuts lacquer lines out of a building with a cutting torch, especially without verifying that they are, indeed, empty? They thought they were drained? That's about as bright as taking a cutting torch to a gas tank that you "thought" was drained by some other guy. No salvage yard cutting cars apart would ever do something so incredibly stupid. Assuming that was indeed the cause, it's no wonder the whole place became engulfed so quickly. It would have been like dumping gas on the place and then lighting a match. It's truly a shame to see 100 years of history go up in flames because some knucklehead with a torch was apparently too lazy to verify that the lines containing flammable fluid were actually empty before blasting them with a few thousand degrees.

Yeah, doesn't sound too wise.