FLORISSANT, Mo. — Some Florissant businesses have been struggling for months to get back on their feet after historic flooding pretty much wiped out one of their major shopping centers.
St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Store is one of only a handful of businesses here in the Florissant Meadows Shopping Center that was able to open about a month after the flood.
“Mainly had to clean up, they had to clean the floors, run humidifiers through the building, just to make it up and running again," Nate Griddine, thrift store receiver and stocker, said. But we're back now.”
Griddine said they’re still working to rebuild.
“They still have to do about two feet high drywall throughout the building, because they had to cut that out around the whole building," Griddine said. "So we're waiting on that to be redone."
They lost a lot of items and are in need of donations, particularly furniture and clothes, so they can continue to help residents who lost everything.
“Mostly our furniture because that was all on the ground and all that," Griddine said. "So we had to get rid of most of the furniture that's here."
"We got rid of things that were on the bottom shelf throughout the store, because the water was about two feet high,” Griddine said.
Residents are grateful the store is open and are hoping for the best.
“Hopefully, it'll all be open again soon...my sister loves Dollar Tree...she used to go there, like almost every other day, and, you know, they're hurting too,” Rick Cheney, a Florissant resident, said.
Another major resource in this center is the license office.
It’s still closed, forcing people to go across town.
“Usually, it's like a 15-minute wait, now it's like an hour, two-hour wait to go in there,: Cheney said. "So that's really impacted a lot of people that were coming over to this area and now going to the other part of Florissant."
The Florissant Mayor’s office said they've been working to expedite the permits these businesses need as well as waiving some of the fees involved to help businesses re-open.