Thursday marked one year since a massive five-alarm fire in Brooklyn tore through a Red Hook warehouse that was home to dozens of artist studios and small businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we have our showroom, our unrefurbished area,\u201d David Singh, co-owner of Lanoba Design, said. \u201cWe have our newly built workshop! It has been customized just for us!\u201d<\/p>\n
The upbeat attitude that emanates these days from Singh and his husband, Lars Noah Balderskilde, is a far cry from the feelings of desperation, loss and confusion when NY1 interviewed them a few days after a five-alarm warehouse fire.<\/p>\n
The fire destroyed their entire inventory of nearly 900 pieces of mid-century modern Danish furniture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been devastating,\u201d Singh told NY1 at the time. \u201cThe first day was completely numb. We try to raise our spirits and look to the future, but it goes back and forth every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
But now, one year after the fire broke out, injuring two firefighters and displacing dozens of small businesses and artists who had studios there, Balderskilde and Singh are back to restoring and selling furniture out of a new location for Lanoba Design in Clinton Hill that opened in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just something that you lean back and think, tomorrow, it\u2019s going to be all done and nice,\u201d Balderskilde, who co-owns the company, said. \u201cIt literally took us seven months to get where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carly Baker-Rice runs the Red Hook Business Alliance, which has been working with impacted artists and business owners by answering questions, connecting them to pro bono legal help and insurance support, and serving as a liaison when applying for federal loans.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people have moved on and they feel great about it,\u201d Baker-Rice said. \u201cIt feels like a release and a new start, and other people are still feeling really frustrated and not knowing what to do because they haven\u2019t been able to find a new space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the summer Samantha de Maryela-Schwartz put together a community healing event in Red Hook, where impacted artists brought photos of their old studios and work that is gone forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have two watercolors that were in my apartment that were not in the fire,\u201d de Maryela-Schwartz said. \u201cI lost everything else. All other painting, sculptures, sketches. Every other artwork I have made.\u201d<\/p>\n
She told NY1 given the high cost of rent across the city, it has been a struggle to find the type of deals that many artists received at the Red Hook warehouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had my corner, and I was able to spread out and use the whole space,\u201d de Maryela-Schwartz said. \u201cI paid for my share. It was shared amongst multiple people. I paid $350 a month. This does not exist in N.Y. today, and it barely existed when we had it.”<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, the owners of Lanoba Design hope their experience will inspire others.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been using all the power we can find in our toolbox to get where we are today,\u201d Balderskilde said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to keep fighting,\u201d Singh said. \u201cAnd it is a fight, and it is a struggle, but you can do it and you can make it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Red Hook Business Alliance said the warehouse on Van Brunt Street remains under active remediation repair.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s not clear when that work will be complete, officials said the facade of the historic building has been saved and that it will be built out into usable space in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thursday marked one year since a massive five-alarm fire in Brooklyn tore through a Red Hook warehouse that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[387,25,98,100,99,9,24,12,63,308,10387,27,200],"class_list":["post-349010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-public-safety","tag-ron-lee","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}