By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

Though waters have been receding across the state for nearly two weeks, some local business owners are only now realizing the extent of the damage caused by the recent floods.

Some of the worst damage afflicted businesses tucked into the Route 3 Kmart shopping plaza in Hooksett.

“As far as what we’ve lost – it’s a whole lot and running,” said Jay Spielberg, owner of Cue & Cushion, a billiards hall with some retail products.

Each day, said Spielberg, he finds problems – like mold, soaked walls or rotting wood – that continue to cost him, after more than a foot of water crept into the store over the weekend of heaviest flooding. All that while business is shut down.

“There’s no place to turn right now,” said Spielberg, who said a claims adjuster wouldn’t even come inspect his business, and instead chalked everything up to flood damage. “We’ve got no revenue, and I’ve got mortgage payments. Those don’t go away.”

The Kmart plaza, across Route 3 from Merchants Motors, has a history of flooding during heavy rains, though none of the business owners interviewed remembered damage matching that wreaked by the recent deluge.

Hooksett Town Planner Charles Watson suggested the plaza’s propensity to collect water may be related a lack of foresight.

“Whoever built there probably wasn’t thinking in terms of a 100-year flood,” he said.
Watson described the land on which the plaza sits as very wet and “boggy,” and said, “by today’s standards it may never have been built on.”

A brook that runs behind the Kmart plaza feeds into piping that runs under the plaza, across Route 3 and the Merchants Motors plaza, and feeds out to more piping and another brook before it runs into the Merrimack River.

The problem arises, said Watson, when rain water accumulates in the piping faster than it can drain.
Compounding the problem, said Watson, is that the whole plaza is in the shape of a “shallow saucer.”

Kim Ong, owner of C&K Nails and Tanning, which is two doors down from Cue & Cushion, said the recent flooding was by far the worst she’s seen in the store.

“We were flooded from front to back,” said Ong.

Ong said crews worked to clean up the store for two days and nights before she was able to open it again a full five days after she was evacuated from the plaza.

Ong’s biggest concerns are her expensive tanning bed and tanning booth, neither of which were functioning as of May 22. Many of her customers previously purchased package deals that allowed them unlimited tanning, but Ong has had to suspend that service.

“I do feel bad for my customers,” she said.

Next door, at Supercuts, manager Michelle Brooks showed walls and flooring that was warped by floodwaters.

“We had a lot of damage,” she said, “Fortunately it’s all replaceable.”
By Monday, May 22, Supercuts was still dealing with some electrical issues, but had been up and running for nearly a week.

“We were only out of business four days,” said Brooks, “but four days is a lot of money.”
A sign of the current’s force at the peak of the flooding, Brooks pointed out a large trash container that had traveled about 20 yards from behind the nearby New Hampshire liquor store to Supercuts’ back door.

Chuck Bean, manager of Off Price Furniture, said about half the store’s inventory was drenched by floodwaters and had to be sent back to the franchise’s central warehouse and may not be salvageable.

Bean said he hoped local and state officials will work with the plaza’s property owner to find a solution to the plaza’s drainage issues.

“Something’s got to be done,” he said. “It should be a joint effort, for sure.”

Watson offered two possibilities for solving the plaza’s drainage woes.

One would be to raise the level of the plaza’s parking lot, while also raising the foundation of the buildings. Another possibility, he said, would be to use some combination of local and state funding to create a more competent piping system that would ease the brook’s flow to the river.

“That would certainly solve the problem, though it would be quite expensive,” Watson said.
Until then, some of the plaza’s proprietors are just trying to make do.

Spielberg said he’s not sure if Cushion & Cue will ever open again, and estimated any reopening would likely take at least six to eight weeks.

Kmart was one of the stores still not open by May 22, but the store’s manager refused to comment.