breaking news
The bulldozers are plowing through the former Sharon Place shopping center in Newburgh, three months after a massive fire tore through nine businesses and a church. No one was injured but very little was salvageable. Wednesday is day one of Sharon Place demolition, and officials say within a week, what you'll see will only be a slab of concrete. The roaring flames from the Sharon Place fire are far from distant memories for those living and working in Newburgh. Don's Cleaners Vice President Cliff Rafferty tells us "This was the first one that we built and opened after I started working at the cleaners so it was really sad the morning of the fire." Don's Cleaner's is just one of the businesses destroyed by this fire officials say was accidental. Rafferty says he's pleased to see the mess finally being cleaned up, "I'm glad, they're finally starting, its been a long time almost four months now." Newburgh's new Town Manager Lori Buehlman started her job just weeks before the fire, "I was still getting the lay of the land here and finding out where businesses were and for something like that to happen it was devastating to the community." Buehlman tells us the town issued demolition permits to get the tools swinging saying "The town played a secondary role, a supportive role to Mr. Stan Brown, the owner of the property, as everyone knows there were multiple businesses in that property and each one of those businesses had their own insurance and Mr. Brown had his own insurance company." She says seeing demolition this soon isn't that common adding "We're just now not even hitting the three month mark and really in insurance time and INDOT time, that's not that long." Rafferty says progress is great, "My friends...well Cliff what are you going to do so I'm glad to see something going now and we can start making decisions." For Don's, the company wants to start over right here, for the town, many say although this is tough to look at, it's a lift in the right direction. Construction workers say the process will take three to five business days, weather permitting. No word from the owner on a timeline for rebuilding,
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