BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer
Eatontown EATONTOWN — Good news for pets and their owners: Petco is back in town.
Almost 18 months after losing its former home at Routes 35 and 36, the San Diego-based retailer of pet food and supplies reopened for business last Thursday in the former Seaman’s Furniture store at 303 Route 35 northbound.
The new location sporting huge display windows is larger than its previous site and will offer many of the same products and services including grooming and “canine education,” according to Don Cowan, a company spokesman.
Inside the 180,000-square-foot space, employees are busy preparing for the store’s grand opening weekend, set for Sept. 15, 16 and 17, said Cowan.
As a special treat for Eatontown and surrounding communities that pitched in to rescue employees and hundreds of animals who were trapped inside the store following a sudden gas line explosion outside its building in March 2005, Petco’s head honchos will be on hand for a VIP event scheduled for Sept. 14 and open to the public, Cowan said.
“The senior management feels it is very important to be there and to meet the community that was so supportive at that time,” Cowan said in an interview on Monday.
The gas explosion and subsequent building collapse that prompted hundreds of first responders from Eatontown, Fort Monmouth, other municipalities and the county and state units to the chaotic scene on a bitterly cold day represents a “very, unusual situation” for the retailer, Cowan went on.
Company officials cannot thank the fire, police and first aid squad members who helped to rescue four Petco employees, a construction company worker and numerous animals enough, he said.
“In a very unfortunate situation, people really came together,” Cowan said.
In the future, and in cooperation with local animal welfare organizations, Petco hopes to offer animal adoption days at its new site.
The new store is located less than a mile south of the Monmouth Mall and just north of Industrial Way East.
Only about two or three of the employees who were working in the Eatontown store at the time of the accident are working at the new location, Cowan said.
However, new employees have been hired to replace workers that were either transferred to other area stores or that left the company after the other building was leveled and ultimately demolished, he said.
An investigation by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office into the March 4, 2005, explosion revealed that it was triggered when a construction company’s backhoe inadvertently struck an unmarked natural gas line situated behind the building.
The construction firm had been subcontracted to excavate behind the building as part of a company-authorized plan to improve lighting behind the store according to Petco officials.
Authorities have credited a construction company worker and four store employees for evacuating customers and their pets from the premises as soon as they smelled the gas leak that signaled the coming explosion.
All five sustained injuries from the building’s collapse after the roof and sales floor pancaked down into the basement, authorities said.
The Prosecutor’s Office later ruled the explosion and resulting building collapse as accidental and no criminal charges were brought against the construction company, New Jersey Natural Gas, or any of the other parties involved with the construction.