Transformer fire leaves Riverdale shopkeepers without electricity

For more than a week, a stretch of businesses in Central Riverdale has been operating in the dark — literally. 

A transformer fire on West 235th Street the night of Sept. 2 knocked out electricity to a shopping center between Johnson and Oxford avenues. While a few storefronts have managed to stay open with costly generators, others were forced to close for days. Some, like Moss Cafe and Liebman’s Deli, remain shuttered.

Aladdin Cleaners owner Judy Lee — who has run the shop for 25 years — had no choice but to turn away customers since the morning after the fire. With washers and dryers idle and the motorized belt that holds hundreds of pressed garments frozen in place, even customers hoping to collect finished clothing must wait. 

The loss of income has been steep. In a typical week, Lee said, the store brings in at least $1,000 a day.

 “It’s hard,” she said. “I have to pay the landlord and then the electric and the employees.”

To fulfill existing orders, she drives loads of clothing to a friend’s dry cleaning business in New Rochelle, a task that requires multiple trips each day.

Supermarket hit hard

Around the corner, Key Food — the only supermarket in Central Riverdale — has also been hit hard.

“[The biggest challenge] has been just trying to clean up and have the store in operating conditions in the dark, working with spotlights we brought in,” store manager Vinny Gomez said.

In the days after the fire, employees rushed to empty refrigerators and deli cases, filling five 30-yard dumpsters with spoiled food. Gomez estimated the loss to be more than $2 million.

The store reopened on Sept. 8 with generator power, but he said it will take several more days before shelves are fully restocked.

Regal Pharmacy also relied on a generator that, pharmacist Robert Newman said, costs hundreds of dollars a day to keep running. Still, he considers it better than the alternative.

“We had no phones for the first three days because we didn’t have a generator yet,” he said. “All calls were routed to my cellphone, and it was one call after the next. If I have to actually talk to somebody, it was hard because I’m trying to finish one person and the calls keep coming.”

He worked by flashlight and lantern, handwriting labels when the pharmacy’s printer would not run. With no online system, which typically handles 200 orders a day, Regal was left to catch up when it finally came back online on Sept. 6. Newman said he faced a backlog of more than 400 orders.

“I was having people come in — if you’re short a pill, we’ll bench a couple of pills, just bring the bottle in, I’ll throw them in the bottle,” he said.

Improvising with car power

Some business owners improvised. At Riverdale Vintners, the first shop on the strip to reopen, the owner turned to his Volvo SUV to power the store. Using outlets on the car, he ran two lines that at ers. Before then, he said, the lack of electricity meant no online orders, no phones and no working registers.

The cause of the fire remains unclear, according to Con Edison. The electrical company told The Press the blaze left equipment inside the building that houses the shopping complex damaged.

Who’ll do repairs?

The landlord of the shopping center alleges Con Edison’s wires caught fire and burned out the cables beneath. Still, Con Edison told The Press that power can only be restored once the landlord hires an electrician to repair the damaged equipment on his property, after which the energy giant can step in.

That work also requires upgrading the two existing service lines to four, as the previous system was already overcapacity.

In the meantime, business owners said they have been left in limbo, with little communication from either the utility or the landlord. Several told The Press they have been unable to reach the latter and only land on voicemail.

“I’ve heard mixed things,” Newman said. “Some people say today, some say tomorrow, some say we don’t know.”