The roof was gone, the salon’s contents were scattered, and debris was everywhere; yet the candy remained in its dish, waiting to be offered up to customers who weren’t coming anytime soon.
“It was weird,” Metrock said. “Some things looked like they hadn’t been touched at all, and some things were just gone.”
Boulevard Salon was one of many businesses the April 27 tornado hit. According to a draft for public review of the City of Tuscaloosa’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Action Plan, 421 businesses that were in the tornado’s path sustained major damage.
Following the storm, Boulevard Salon and other Tuscaloosa businesses rebuilt their establishments, regardless of weather and politics going on at the time. Metrock and her father, who originally bought the lot Boulevard Salon sits on in 1979, went to work clearing the space so they could start the rebuilding process.
“When something makes a mess, you clean it up,” Metrock said.
Less than a year later on March 1, 2012, on its one-year anniversary, Boulevard Salon reopened its doors. It was one of the first businesses back.
As its five-year anniversary approaches, Metrock said the business is doing great.
She is not the only one. Many Tuscaloosa business owners, such as Full Moon BBQ’s Brian Ahmed, Krispy Kreme’s Evan Smith and Express Oil Change’s John Carney, said their businesses are doing well after rebuilding.
“I think we’re above and beyond where we thought we’d be five years ago,” Smith said.
Carney said the McFarland Boulevard and 15th Street area are the life breath of the city.
On the day of the tornado, Carney drove to his shop where he joined eight employees and two families in the shop’s pit. They crammed against one wall to stay away from debris.
“It was 60 to 90 seconds before it all moved through,” Carney said. “And then we all came out, and there was nothing left. Everything that was above street level was gone.”
Carney said if he had been forced to move his business somewhere else, it would’ve never been the same.
“I thought when we started that business that the best part about it was the location, you know?” he said. “That’s the action capital of the city.”
The location of Smith’s Krispy Kreme had sentimental value. Just as Metrock received her piece of land from her father, Krispy Kreme has been in Smith’s family since 1959. He is the third generation to own the store, and he was not about to give it up.
“We knew we were going to be back,” Smith said.
If not for his family, Smith knew he had to come back for the customers. They would show up while the store was closed, saying how much they miss Krispy Kreme. They’d been driving to Birmingham to get their donuts.
“We have a good business here, but I had no idea the love for Krispy Kreme that was in Tuscaloosa – they showed it when we reopened,” Smith said.
Carney wanted to rebuild for his customers, who are mostly University of Alabama students. He said the biggest motivator in getting back in business was his employees. During the rebuilding process Carney paid his employees around 80 percent of their salary using insurance funds.
“Getting them back to normal, and getting them back to work, was the only thing that was going to erase the bad memories that they had – getting back to normal as quick as possible,” Carney said.
Taking care of employees was also at the top of Metrock’s to-do list.
Her salon employment is made up entirely of rented chairs. Hairdressers rent a spot from Metrock and then decide their own days, hours, what services they will provide, etc. She let these hairdressers get an income by renting a chair elsewhere for the time being since her salon was temporarily out of business.
“I found a temporary location to work at within 48 hours, and by the next week, I was taking clients in a salon downtown,” Metrock said.
When Boulevard Salon did reopen, Metrock said some employees stayed at their new locations, but a good number came back and the empty chairs filled up quickly.
Carney is proud to admit he was able to keep all of the employees from before the tornado by giving them a check every month and making a commitment to them. He said eventually, the funds he was paying his employees with ran out before the shop was reopened.
Following the tornado, Tuscaloosa developed the Tuscaloosa Forward Plan, which changed many codes. This meant that rebuilding Express Oil Change would be easier said than done. The city scratched the plans Carney already had in mind.
“The only thing I won was the opportunity to build back my store at their discretion,” Carney said.
Express Oil Change had to give back some property to the city, change the configuration of the property, change the entrances and exits of the shop and fill in the old pit and move it 10 or 15 feet.
“We had to retrain people on how to get in and out of here because it was so different from what we had in the past,” Carney said. “There was an orientation period for employees and customers as well.”
Metrock also had a hard time with the city. She said the Tuscaloosa Forward plan wanted to put a walking path where her business used to stand and that getting permits was very difficult.
“Just because the wind blew that shouldn’t mean that you no longer are allowed to be functional and make a living here,” Metrock said.
Although it was no walk in the park – or on the city’s desired walking path – Metrock did rebuild and feels very blessed and happy to be back in business, remembering some businesses were not as fortunate.
Business owners who did rebuild are not only happy for that, but also for the redevelopment of the damaged area.
Ahmed said the city is a different city today than it was before the tornado, and it’s for the better.
“It was a horrible situation, but a lot of good came out of that,” he said. “There has been a lot of new rebuilding, a lot of new possibilities, a lot of jobs. A lot of things have come out of it that benefited the community at large that we didn’t have before.”
Smith agreed. The new rebuilding has been an asset to Tuscaloosa.
“All this new development around us has done nothing but help sales,” Smith said. “There’s a lot more traffic.”
At the same time, business owners are finding increased traffic can also be a negative, particularly when it comes to the road construction it has led to.
“I said, at one time, that it would be five years before it was all rebuilt, and I’m even going to be wrong on that,” Carney said.
The Tuscaloosa Forward Plan is responsible for the construction, which takes place heavily along McFarland Boulevard. Business owners said it is impacting their business.
“Honestly, it has hurt sales,” Smith said. “People avoid McFarland.”
Ahmed said the incomplete infrastructure hurts Full Moon BBQ as well, whether or not people are trying to avoid it.
“If you drive by on McFarland Boulevard and you don’t have access [to the business] or you have difficulty getting in and out, then you’re not going to stop,” he said. “You’re going to keep driving.”
Regardless if the construction hurts right now, Smith said it’ll be better in the long run, so much so that it’ll even be better than how things were before the tornado.
Ahmed agreed and said it’s all a process.
“All we can do is take it one day at a time and eventually everything will fall back in place,” Ahmed said. “I hope [the next five years are] going to be great. That’s all we can imagine, that it’s going to get better.”
