Call it bad timing. Call it bad luck.

Gordon Tse was in the first day and half after opening his brand new Domino’s Pizza location at the Tsawwassen Town Centre Mall near the end of April when he noticed it was kind of foggy outside the store’s windows.

“We smelled something burning and thought, is that our oven,” Tse says. “We looked outside and it was a real sunny day, but it was suddenly foggy, and couldn’t figure out why.”

But when Tse went outside to investigate, he noticed the telltale smell of a fire and knew things were going bad.

“We had to close things down for safety reasons, and the rest is like history,” he adds.

The fire, which is believed to have started at one of the adjacent businesses, gutted almost an entire row of units, leaving many of the owners without a home for the past six months or so.

Next week, Tse is hoping to open the doors on his new store located across from Rotary Square, next door to the Blenz Coffee shop.

“The fire never really got to us, we just suffered water damage,” Tse says. “There we were, we had about 14 people (employees) busy making pizza, customers walking in, phone orders coming in, and the fire started,” Tse says. "I feel sorry, because we collected money from some of our customers, and we were never able to give them their pizzas. But if they come back, we’ll definitely give them their pizzas.”

Luckily, the franchise agreement for the business requires purchasing an insurance package, so Tse was able to rebuild and re-open the business.

Last week, contractors were putting the finishing touches on the Domino’s Pizza store and it’s focal point—the oven, which can turn out around 100 pizzas an hour.

Now, Tse is looking for staff to get things running and is looking forward to making a go of it in the new location.

Also eager to get back on track in new digs after the fire forced relocation are Dina Boykiw who runs Lola Bleu, and Jennifer Brennick of Flowers Beautiful.

Boykiw re-opened in her new location just down from Domino’s Pizza last Thursday (Oct. 29) and has already noticed an increase in the foot traffic to her store.

Boykiw says business at her temporary location in the commercial area of the nearby Windsor Woods building was down considerably and is looking to rebound in the new spot.

Over at Flowers Beautiful, which is in the same area, owner Brennick kicked off a re-opening party Oct. 30 with a crowd of about 80 people and live classic rock and roll music by her dad’s band Time Machine.

Brennick says her business was down by about 50 per cent while in a temporary spot.

“People love the new store here, the green colours,” she says. “It was a long six months while we waited to get in here.”

Another business setting up shop in the Rotary Square area is Mud Bay Wines which had found a temporary spot inside the mall.

Meanwhile, the popular Peek-A-Boo sushi restaurant is scheduled to re-open in the mall in the space formerly occupied by Sante Bistro.

The Chocolate Bear Shoppe found new premises shortly after the fire in a unit adjacent to Wagner’s European Fabricare.

A handful of businesses did not re-open. They included Giovanni’s Deli, Sunflower Gifts and Town Centre Fish Market. The latter two were to close due to retirement at around the time of the fire.

The gutted string of commercial units had to be demolished because asbestos was found inside the aging structure.

No immediate plans have been made on what will be done on the site.

editor@southdeltaleader.com