The road to a new warehouse was long and winding

With all the attention that massive distribution centers occupied by Quaker Oats, Walmart, Amazon and other big-name corporations around the Gulf Coast receive, it’s easy to lose sight that small businesses — and the smallish buildings that they occupy — remain the lifeblood of the region’s economy.

It’s also not hard to forget that behind every business and building is a person, or people, who make it run and persevere.

Which brings us to a Friday evening in late September and to Maintenance Too Paper Co. owner John Hargreaves, dressed in a bright orange shirt with a victory cigar dangling from his mouth, smiling wide and surrounded by family, friends, vendors and customers.

The unlit cigar capped a three-year-plus odyssey, of sorts, to purchase and renovate a new warehouse and retail space in Bradenton — a journey that would undulate between heartache and triumph and many places in between.

Hargreaves had come across the building, at 629 17th Ave. West in Bradenton, across from Pittsburgh Pirates’ spring training home LECOM Park, in late 2014.

At roughly 22,000 square feet, the size was right for his then-current inventory and it would provide enough breathing room for his restaurant and janitorial supply business to grow for years to come.

The building had enough office space to meet Maintenance Too’s needs and he believed it had retail space and street frontage that was superior to the building he was in, too.

Better yet, it was vacant and for sale, for $700,000. The price was a little on the high side for Hargreaves, but he was intrigued. After he and his wife, Kathy, a CPA, did a walk through, she gave the deal a thumbs up.

The Dark Side

But the building had a dark side. A former factory that had most recently been the home of plaque maker Laser Works, the 17th Avenue West building was on an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency list of contaminated properties.

The EPA had set up wells throughout the 1.3-acre site to monitor ground water, which had tested positive for harmful chemicals.

Undeterred, Hargreaves dug in. He discovered that so-called “brownfield” grants might be available to help mitigate the cost of cleanup. Thinking “glass is half full,” he convinced himself that the contamination just might knock the price down a bit. The number $500,000 bounced around in his head.

Hargreaves’ mood lifted even further after talks with EPA officials, who told him that the bloom of contaminants wasn’t as severe as they originally theorized, based on their most recent monitoring reports.

In February 2015, Hargreaves enlisted the help of an environmental attorney he’d met and offered $600,000.

Two weeks later, he received a call from the Ian Black Real Estate agent listing the property on behalf of owner SM-17th Avenue LLC, an affiliate of Lakewood Ranch-based SMG Property Management, according to county property and state records.

He was too late.

The property had just gone under contract to a church, which liked the building’s central Bradenton location.

Hargreaves was crestfallen.

Disappointed, he went back to the 6,000-square-foot building Maintenance Too had been operating from in the Bayshore Gardens section of the city.

“We literally had stuff bursting out of that building,” says Hargreaves, who is also chairman of the Manatee Performing Arts Center.

“We must have had 10,000 square feet of product inside.”

Even worse than the cramped workplace, the building lacked a truck well. That meant that every delivery — many of which came off of tractor trailers with pallet after pallet of cleaning supplies, uniforms, packing tape, napkins and vacuum cleaners — had to be unloaded by hand by several of Maintenance Too’s roughly dozen employees.

Meanwhile, back on 17th Avenue, things weren’t going well for the church, either. The property’s zoning didn’t allow for houses of worship in a largely industrial setting.

629 17th Ave. West came back on the market.

Hargreaves came back, too, offering $550,000 — this time with a deposit.

Months then passed, as environmental testing and mitigation dragged on. So much time went by, in fact, that Hargreaves asked SM-17th Avenue to slice $75,000 off the purchase price. To sweeten the offer, Hargreaves said he’d close within weeks of their acceptance.

He wasn’t optimistic they’d agree to the reduction, but he figured he didn’t have much to lose, either.

It was the same way he felt when he started Maintenance Too in 1981, with just $500, after being exposed to a similar business in his native Detroit.

At first, he worked out of a van he owned. As the business grew with hotel, restaurant and doctors’ offices as customers, he rented a garage to store inventory.

For the first year or so, he operated on a strictly “cash on delivery” basis, and he began cleaning offices on the side to keep the business afloat.

Eventually, he rented a spot in a strip center on Old U.S. 301, in Bradenton, where he worked for eight years until he outgrew it, prompting the shift to Bayshore Gardens.

A Surprising Reply

To his surprise, SM-17th Avenue accepted his request to lower the price — somewhat.

Where Hargreaves had written in $75,000, SMG Property officials had crossed out the number and replaced it with another: $50,000.

If Hargreaves could close, he’d acquire the property for the $500,000 he’d optimistically hoped for more than a year earlier, provided he buy the building “as is.”

He was ecstatic, an emotion that grew when his EPA contacts told him they were considering closing their case because the contamination had been steadily contained and was shrinking on the property.

The feeling wouldn’t last, though.

With the clock ticking on the closing, Hargreaves approached his bank about a mortgage.

The request was denied.

The bank told him he couldn’t get a loan while an EPA case was open.

To officially close it under the law, though, officials were required to advertise the case status and pending change for a period of 30 days and notify state officials ranging from the Attorney General to the head of the Department of Environmental Protection.

So much for a quick closing.

Frantic, Hargreaves got in touch with SM-17th Avenue and explained.

Luckily for him, the seller understood and agreed to an extension while the EPA closed its books on the site.

On Sept. 15, 2016, Hargreaves’ company became the proud owner of 629 17th Ave. W for $500,000.

That evening, Hargreaves bought a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey, some beer and wine and cheese and crackers for a celebration at Maintenance Too’s new home.

Hargreaves, his wife, a few employees and their spouses gathered outside.

When they opened the doors, they were met with more than an inch of standing water and mud.

Because the building had been vacant for so long, and so much attention had been paid to the EPA monitoring wells, no one had noticed that a portion of the ceiling had caved in. Hargreaves hadn’t done a final walk-through before closing because his contract called for him to buy the place “as is.”

No one had noticed that the truck well had been completely flooded, either, or that it had become a home to dozens of frogs and tadpoles. Hargreaves surveyed the damage with his hands on his head and his mouth agape.

The celebration would have to wait.

Over the next 18 months, Hargreaves would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours — often on Saturday mornings and throughout weekends — pumping out the water, cleaning up the mud, repairing the ceiling and installing new fire suppression equipment, LED lighting and a sturdy racking system.

Along the way, he discovered that all the interior walls had been damaged by termites, too.

“All the walls were shot and had to be replaced,” he says. “You’d lean against them and they would just crumble.”

Finally, in March, Maintenance Too moved into its new home.

Customers say the new digs are an improvement and should boost what is already a superior level of service.

“The new place is great,” says Jarrod Johanns, who owns a local Jani-King cleaning franchise. “It’s a lot bigger, and should allow him to do a lot more things. And I am glad for John, too. His level of service is amazing, no matter if you call him on nights, weekends, whenever. He’s very responsive.”

Hargeaves, for his part, also is glad to have the warehouse’s heavy lifting behind him.

“It was definitely a case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’” he says. “It was a lot of sleepless nights, for sure, and a lot of hard, physical work and sacrifice. But we’re very happy with it, and our customers are happy with it. It’s closer to home and downtown Bradenton, so that’s a big plus for deliveries and pickups.

“But would I do it all again?” Hargreaves asks rhetorically. “I’m going to have to think about that some.”