Furniture store burned out relocates a block away

Three weeks after a suspicious fire gutted Paradise Bedding, Dinettes & Furniture, the Bell Boulevard store's owners celebrated a semi-official reopening just one block away from their burned-out location.
After the three-alarm fire on Monday, August 21 gutted the store, Paradise's owner Bruce Davis said he walked the span of Bell Boulevard from Northern Boulevard to the Bay Terrace shopping mall, looking into retail space that was for rent.
&#8220I was only really closed for one day,” Davis said, while carrying furniture into the new location at 43-23 Bell Boulevard. The furniture shop, which has been in Bayside for over 31 years, also had to restock all of its merchandise after every piece was burned.
&#8220It's just a rebuilding process,” Davis said, pointing to new furniture and bedding which comprised about 50 percent of the items that had packed the former store at 42-03 Bell Boulevard.
Davis said that he did have some help - his current employees worked through the night on several occasions helping him haul furniture into the new store which formerly housed the A. Kraus & Son paint and wallpaper store. In addition, former employees did their share to help the furniture store reopen.
&#8220Everyone that has ever worked here has come back,” Davis joked.
To pay tribute to those who offered a helping hand, Davis, and his employees hosted a morning &#8220Thank you” party on Saturday, Sept. 2.
&#8220Now the only thing left to do is thanking everyone for their thoughts and concern,” Davis said as he straightened chairs around the dinette sets and fluffed couch cushions on a large blue sofa in the new store.
&#8220The community has been unbelievable. There is no place like Bayside,” said Davis, who added that he hopes to stay in the neighborhood. &#8220When something like this happens, you see how much people really care.”
Davis' 10-year-old son Adam also contributed a key fixture to the new store that will remind customers of the former store between Carvel and Gateaux Bakery & Caf: a picture of a stick-figure person sunbathing on a lounge chair under the words &#8220Paradise Dinettes.”
&#8220The first thing [Adam] asked was, ‘Dad I'm really sorry for what happened to you, but did my sign get burned,” Davis said. &#8220And then the same day, he made up this one.”
Fire investigators still have not released their findings into the cause of the fire, a three-alarm blaze which was believed to have begun at 1 a.m. in the alcove of the furniture store, and spread to the building on the north side of Paradise and gutted four apartments before it was extinguished at 3 a.m.