Clarksville florist faces heavy floods, financial burden

Clark County

Discussion

September 22, 2009

Owners talk to town council Monday night about flooding woes

BY SCOTT MCDANIEL The News and Tribune Tue Sep 22, 2009, 01:00 AM EDT

When the heavy rains come, the Clarksville Town Council meetings flood with concerned residents.

Angela Smith and her mother, Becky Wadsworth, were on hand Monday night to share the dire situation facing their longtime floral business, Cannon’s Florist.

“We’re one of the oldest businesses in Clarksville and we’re not going to be able to stay open,” Smith began.

She acknowledges that with the economy the way it is, flowers are among the first items to be scratched from shopping lists anyway. Add in the costs of lost product and repairs because of flooding to their shop, and their finances are even worse.

“We don’t know what to do. It’s our livelihood. We can’t afford to stay, but we can’t afford to move out,” she said.

Even if they could, she said she couldn’t sell the at-risk building to anyone.

Located at 1026 N. Clark Blvd., the flower shop has been around for nearly 80 years, Smith said. The shop relocated about six years ago with the knowledge that the building it was moving into sometimes had inches of water leak into its garage.

When serious rain fell three years ago, the water showed up elsewhere — and fast.

The basement unexpectedly filled up with a few feet of water. The financial damage was in the thousands, and the shop had to temporarily close.

Moving past that disaster years ago, Smith said she understood what everyone was saying — that such an amount of rain only comes every 100 years.

But five weeks ago the water rushed in again, causing about $20,000 in damage.

“Within minutes, it was from our ankles to our waists,” she said. “We had 4 feet [of water] in our basement.

The shop has its showroom on the top floor, but its fresh flowers are in the basement. Even if they are able to get flowers and materials out of the basement before it floods, the cost of cleaning up, removing the leftover mud and bleaching to sanitize the room is significant.

And Sunday night, there it was again.

“This time we had about 21⁄2 feet. It shut us down. We have to clean up,” she said.

Smith said she has spoken with council members and she was told that such heavy amounts of rain are rare events. But these days, they’re not rare enough.

“We’ve heard the 100-year flood [excuse] five weeks ago. We heard it three years ago. Something needs to be done,” she said.

Smith said the building is not in a flood zone, so they can’t apply for federal help. Insurance doesn’t help, and any money that is offered to help is a loan, so they’d have to pay it back.

On Monday, Smith and Wadsworth rented equipment and personally pumped out the water.

“We can’t afford to have someone help us,” she said.

The future is unclear for Cannon’s Florist. The plan is to open again in a few days once they’re got everything sanitized and functioning, but the shop won’t be running full-force for a while.

And if the waters rise again?

“We just don’t know if we can do it again,” she said.

Town Council President Greg Isgrigg said he has seen the damage the flooding causes, and the town has a plan to deal with some of those issues, but it is still waiting on money from the state to fix the areas it has mapped out.

“We’ve got a plan. We need to initiate it,” he said.

In other business

• Isgrigg proclaimed this month Down Syndrome Awareness Month in Clarksville.

— Scott McDaniel is a journalist who lives in Clarksville.