Outdoor Junction Open For Business After Jan. Fire

After a fire closed Outdoor Junction for about a month, the Cookeville sporting goods store reopened Tuesday.

CEO Steve Carter said seeing customers walk through the doors again is a great feeling.

“This is a great area to live in,” Carter said. “A whole lot of the customers are just like family. They are in here a lot of them almost daily. We had a lot of prayers. We had a lot of people behind us. We had a lot of people volunteering to help us, and as a result, it made everything going together much easier.”

Carter said currently, only the retail portion of the building is open for business. Carter said the store’s shooting range suffered extensive damage during the mid-January fire, and a total rebuild will be required. Carter said that work will take about three months to be complete.

“The fire was in the ceiling on the range,” Carter said. “There was a wire and a piece of conduit that apparently just went bad for whatever reason,” Carter said. “It got hot and set the insulation on fire. When it set the insulation on fire, then the range received extensive damage. We are going to have to tear it completely out and rebuild all of it. The upstairs retail portion of the store was impacted by smoke damage.”

Carter said the entire store had to be repainted and all of the store’s merchandise affected by the smoke was sent to a salvage company.

“We’ve been on a very fast pace on trying to get back open,” Carter said. “It was kinda slow during the beginning trying to get through the insurance part of it,”

Carter said the reopening seemed to take forever to happen, but he is thankful to be able to reopen and thanks the community for the support.