Store owners at the Stadium Shopping Centre are slowly recovering from a fire that destroyed a number of shops last month and are working to reach out to their customers to let them know they are back in business.

Fire crews were called to a fire at the strip mall at the corner of 16th Avenue and Uxbridge Drive NW at about 7:00 a.m. on November, 12, 2015 and spent the better part of two days putting it out.

The roof of the old mall was made of drywall, straw, tar and metal and the fire flared up several times and managed to spread between the layers and move around the building.

Four businesses were completely gutted and two others were heavily damaged in the blaze and the owners are now trying to rebuild or relocate.

Margaret Brown is the owner of Gillette’s Fabricare and says work crews are making great strides to repair her shop.

“We got a new boiler put in yesterday because the boiler was not fixable and needed to be replaced, and they’re putting in all the electrical, gas, and water lines that were all torn out during that time. So it’s all in the ceiling so they’ve replaced a lot of the ceiling already and the heater, yeah, everything’s been pulled out so they’re doing really good,” she said.

Brown says client’s clothes that were in the store when the fire broke out have been restored and she is making every effort to deliver them to her customers.

“Everything is at my home at this time and I’m trying to deliver everybody’s clothes so if anybody can give me a call on my cell, the number is posted on the outside of the store, cause as we sit I don’t have a forwarding number,” said Brown. “I’m hoping that people will be able to follow us, to come back, to come back to the same store. It is our busiest time of year and it’s the worst right now, and no time is a good time, but this is the worst.”

Brown has insurance so she says she’s covered and hopes to reopen within a week or two.

New Expression Nails and Spa was also damaged in the fire and owner Tu Nguyen says his whole family pitched in to pick up the pieces and get the shop ready for the professional cleaners.

“They spent two days in here to clean up everything from every wall, every chair, every corner. Then after that they brought in the Ozone machine and it ran for like three to four days to kill the smoke. And after that we had to come back in to set up everything,” said Nguyen.

He says it’s a family run business and he’s concerned that his customers are not aware that they are open for business.

"This time of the year, it’s quite busy for our business too so we tried to get everything cleaned and have everybody come in but since we opened it’s still very slow right now because most of the customers they live around the city and they don’t know we are reopened,” he said.

The Cat House was one of the businesses that was destroyed and co-owner Joanne Wegiel says they are looking at places to relocate to. “We have found one not far from here that interests us the most and we will pursue it but we have to have a backup plan so we’re going to look at more locations tomorrow."

Wegiel says the support from the community and customers has been amazing.

“People have been so generous with donations to help us rebuild but the comments from them, it’s just so incredible to hear the wonderful comments from people and how they really do feel it was more than a store, it was a cat community and they really want to see us come back and they’re making donations for that reason,” she said.

So far supporters have raised $23,000 through a gofundme campaign to help Wegiel out.

The reopened businesses will soon be faced with another challenge as the site is scheduled to be redeveloped and the mall’s owners, Western Securities, say they hope to apply for a development permit in January.

Investigators have removed a number of items from the site but so far a cause for the fire has not been determined.