Skroungers’ scrounging comes to an end

Business shuts down; owner blames City

A local business man says dealing with incompetent City staff and red tape has resulted in him losing his business.

Barry Flett, owner and operator of Skroungers, a thrift and salvage store at 669 Logan Ave., closed its doors in December after what he calls a lack of answers and action from City staff.

“I had questions, I went to the City many, many times and no one could answer them,” said Flett.

Flett’s ordeal began when he first scouted the location, a warehouse built in 1900 on Logan Avenue, to house his recycling business two years ago.

“I went to the City and asked about upgrades,” he said, because he wanted to know what he needed to do to bring the space up to code.

He says he was told he would need about $1,000 in upgrades to the space.

“I thought, ‘OK, that’s doable,’” he said. He signed a lease with the landlord but immediately ran into trouble when he went to get an occupancy permit.

“The lady told me that the building didn’t exist.”

Flett says he was never told why the building wasn’t in City computers, but figures since the building was connected to other buildings on the block at one time, that may have resulted in the screw-up.

Because the address didn’t exist, Flett was unable to get an occupancy permit or a business license.

“It was ridiculous,” said Flett, who said after weeks of phoning and running around to different City departments, he finally decided to simply open the store.

“I had to get going, I had to play catch up for two months of lost revenue.”

After about a year, Flett says his building was entered into City computers, and the City began inspecting his store.

He was then told the warehouse needed at least $60,000 worth of fire and code upgrades.

“This is something I was asking them before, when I was asking questions and nobody knew. Then I’m told to upgrade... why couldn’t these people tell me this before?”

For the next few months Flett says he began looking for another space to house his business, but was unsuccessful before he was forced to close.

City spokesperson Terry Aseltine said when a space is being converted from industrial to retail, there are always going to be big costs with that.

“There are safety factors to be considered.”

Aseltine said the City feels they did everything possible to help him, including giving Flett an interim occupancy permit.

Flett said the worst thing was the fact that a good portion of the goods that had been donated to his business to be recycled and kept out of the landfill will now be trucked out to Brady Landfill.

Flett estimated at least two semi-truck loads full of recyclable or reusable goods will be dumped as a result.

“That certainly wasn’t my intention,” said Flett.

Flett, who is also an antique dealer, intends to keep searching for a space to re-open his business.

He said he needs a warehouse and retail space of about 10,000 square feet to operate his business.