Peggy Green kept her secret about the arson for a decade.
On Jan. 16, 2003, an unknown arsonist started a fire in the basement of Green’s Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electrical that drew dozens of firefighters from all over the city, caused more than $1 million in damage and destroyed the 63-year-old University Place home of an iconic business that is now 92 years old.
At its height, the fire spit 30-foot flames out the store’s front door and across two lanes of traffic on North 48th Street. Thick smoke billowed up and covered the city in black.
Firefighters from 21 units across the city, including some who were called in while off-duty, battled the three-alarm blaze for hours until gaining control in the late afternoon. Many stayed overnight.
They saved a man from a second-story apartment using a fire truck’s ladder. One broke his ankle in the basement of the two-story, concrete block-and-brick building at 2747 N. 48th St.
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No one else was injured, something Green still thinks about.
“You realize two months later that you barely got out with your life,” she said. “There were other people in that building whose lives were at risk.
“What if one person hadn’t made it out?”
Everyone did, including Green, whose grandfather founded the business she inherited in 1987.
Once firefighters beat the fire down, investigators started poking through the wreckage. They homed in on arson almost immediately, city fire Inspector Chuck Schweitzer said, and spent the next month making sure it couldn’t have been an accident, ruling out bad wiring, a wayward cigarette, a furnace or a water heater that went haywire.
“It became obvious it was suspicious right away,” Green said. “It just wasn’t a normal type of accidental fire, a lot of red flags.”
But Schweitzer asked Green to tell no one, not even her employees. Keeping it secret would allow investigators a better chance to catch and prosecute the arsonist. That was -- and is -- important to Green.
“I think (the arsonist) is capable of doing this again,” Green said. “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. I want this person caught. This is a dangerous person.”
It wasn’t easy. Just because investigators didn’t say it was arson didn’t mean that people weren’t thinking it. Green said she’s lived under a mist of suspicion.
“I was suspect. There were comments made that I was the person who set it,” Green said. “People said bad things: ‘It was probably bad wiring or an ex-husband or a disgruntled employee.’ I just let it go.
“It left people’s minds probably thinking the worst, but you know, I can’t control that.”
The unknown arsonist has eluded investigators. Schweitzer said their work led to a promising suspect years ago, but his alibi checked out. The case still is open, but not active. No one’s working on it, but if new evidence pops up, they’ll check it out.
There’s no statute of limitations on arson, meaning prosecutors could file charges at any time.
In the wake of the fire, Green’s rebounded fast. Its trucks, which carried a lot of the store's inventory, were buzzing around town even as the fire destroyed the store.
The company moved into a temporary location at North 48th Street and Huntington Avenue, once inhabited by Northeast Printers. Three months later, Green moved her company to its current location at 4200 N. 48th St. and bought the three-acre site.
But there were bumps, too.
It took a year to replace the furniture. In the meantime, Green and her crew worked off of folding tables. Though some equipment was on trucks, Green’s lost most of its inventory. So Peggy Green had to orchestrate normal operations while managing the glut of replacement supplies streaming to her new store.
“It was like building a new inventory while you were still fully operational," she said. “Picture stocking an entire Ace Hardware while you’re still doing daily business.”
Losing the store and moving out of the neighborhood wasn’t just about convenience, serving customers or even the bottom line, Green said. She grew up in that store, stumbling around as a child. Many employees worked there their entire careers. Some wept openly as they watched it burn.
Green, her employees and her customers lost a pillar of the University Place business community, where plumbers drank coffee with shoppers and people would pop in.
Green said she misses the business neighbors she had and grew up with, a feeling shared by former Mayor Coleen Seng, who represented University Place on the City Council when the fire destroyed Green’s.
“It was like a part of your body was just torn out,” Seng said. “Green’s is really part of the history of University Place. Many residents were employed at Green’s through the years, so it was part of the lives of many University Place residents."
The old Green's site hasn't rebounded like the business it housed for more than six decades.
The property is home to a gravel lot. The city of Lincoln bought it from Green in 2006 for $387,500, and it's now home to the University Place Community Market, which runs from June through September. The half-acre sits empty and unused the rest of the year.
Green said she’d like to see something rise from the ashes of the place where her family, employees and friends have so much history -- something that, like Green’s Plumbing, would anchor the community and help draw more people to the area.
“It looks so lifeless,” she said. “To see nothing there on half a block for 10 years ... I don’t know, it’s very sad.”
Doug Emery, the city councilman who now represents University Place, said he wants the same thing. He’s not aware of any active plans to redevelop the site.
“We want to fill those gaps, and we want to keep those shopping areas as vibrant as possible,” he said. “Anything that would attract a crowd and get people to walk down the street and use the restaurant and use the coffee shop.”
The property won’t sit empty forever, and will some day probably be home to a mixed-use development, which could include apartments above a business, Emery said.
“Once the city can get back to it, there will be redevelopment there."
The quicker the better, Seng said.
“There’s a big void. That area needs to be redeveloped. It’s pretty obvious.”