MUSKEGON, Mich. — The owners of El Royal party store are thankful for the support from the Muskegon and Fruitport community.
Longtime customers have been coming to see the new building, built to make sure what caused the fire more than a year ago will not happen again.
Located off of Airline Highway, El Royal burned down due to a fire police say was started by a 10 year old left unattended, and set fire to the wood being sold outside the building.
The wood-frame structure has since been replaced with fire-proof cement blocks and a metal roof, built with the goal of preventing any similar disasters.
The store has now grown in size and even includes a new liquor wall. Owner, Dhanveer Singh is happy to welcome back loyal community members who have been waiting to return after the fire.
"I feel like everyone in the community was impacted, even after it had burnt down. There are so many customers that stopped by and said, you know, we're so sorry. Like, don't worry about it, it's gonna come up, it's gonna be better. And we'll, we'll get more customers in here too."
Singh talked about the challenges from COVID and gathering materials that his family had to overcome to see the store reopen, but the greatest challenege was seeing the store his parents had been building up for 20 years disappear. Now he says they are happy to see the store open again in their new building.
The future for the store was not known in the immediate aftermath of the fire.
"The first month there's some doubt just because of, I guess, like how much of the process is going to be, long, but we ended up rebuilding."
Now Singh says that the community is thankful that they chose to stay and rebuild, just as him and his family are happy to welcome them back.
"Thank you for your support, and especially the Fruitport township all of our customers, like they're coming back and just saying like, 'we're happy now to come back and be here and see you guys that are still here and not changing ownership to a different ownership or just selling off and saying we're not coming back.' But we're happy to be here."
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