Sports One Slowly Recovers From April Fire

It has been a slow recovery for Cookeville Sports One owner Bob Larrick.

Larrick’s business suffered fire and water damage from an April fire at the downtown location. He said he is meeting with contractors to explore rebuilding options.

“Of course the building cost has gone up quite a bit just in the last few months,” Larrick said. “With everything going on, I guess Covid and things like that have caused a huge price increase in goods. So it’s going to cost more to build this building back and everything than it would have a year ago.”

Larrick said his business is under survival mode. He has technology to create designs for customers, but has to sub out the printing. The fire destroyed the company’s printing equipment.

Repairing the old Sports One building will be expensive and could take over eight months, but Larrick said he doesn’t want to change the image that was there before.

“This old side of town on Broad Street, I mean there’s a lot of history here, and we want to get the building to look back like it did back when they built it, back in 1920,” Larrick said. “I like modern buildings and things like that, and they have their place. This isn’t the place for that, and we want it look like it belongs here.”

Most of the merchandise was either destroyed or damaged. Because of the petroleum based smoke, some of the items are salvageable but difficult to clean.

Sports One is operating out of 48 W. Broad Street in the old Magnolia Blush boutique building. Larrick said they are still offering the same services as before: monogramming, sports uniforms, and custom shirts.