EAST VILLAGE – A rockabilly-style clothing store, once frequented by Lou Reed, will be opening a new pop-up shop on East Sixth Street Thursday after it was destroyed by the Second Avenue gas explosion, its owner said.
Enz’s — which was once a “local hangout” for rockers like Reed and Debbie Harry and counts Helen Mirren and Norah Jones as customers — will operate out of 627 East Sixth St. while workers rebuild the Second Avenue storefront it has occupied for the past 10 years, said owner Mariann Marlowe.
Marlowe, like other business owners in the area, was forced to close after the explosion ripped through 121 Second Ave. on March 26.
When she was allowed back into her store, located two doors down from the blast site, she found extensive water damage, Marlowe said. The basement was flooded, the floors buckled and black mold had begun growing on the walls, she said.
“It’s a raw space right now. It’s down to the beams,” she said. Marlowe, who does not have business insurance, expects the work to cost $30,000. She also expects to pay up to $5,000 to dry clean the clothing she salvaged from the shop, she said.
An online fundraiser has been set up to help Marlowe rebuild the store but she hopes to minimize her losses through the pop-up.
The East Sixth Street pop-up will be the third one she has set up since the incident. Two weeks after the explosion, Marlowe set up shop at 103 Allen St. with the help of of Made in the Lower East Side, a local startup that connects landlords with vacant properties to individuals looking to hold temporary events.
Marlowe then moved to 90 Stanton St. on April 18 to make way for another tenant that had reserved the space before the explosion, said Eric Ho, who founded miLES in 2012.
ENZ’s second pop-up was scheduled to run until April 29 but a friend who owned the East Sixth Street space offered it to her free of cost, Marlowe said.
The previous locations asked her to pay $1,500 for two weeks and take a 10 percent cut of each sale, she said. Ho said the landlord of the Allen Street location only asked for 10 percent of each transaction, but did not know the details of the Stanton Street deal.
“It’s exhausting. I just want to be back home in the [Second Avenue] store,” Marlowe said.
She hopes to reopen in mid-May, she said.
