Auburn pizza restaurant suffers fire amidst lockdown, grateful for community

An Auburn institution Athens Pizza and Pasta suffered some significant damage during a fire at the strip mall that the restaurant is located at. Obviously it’s happening at the worst possible time, as they’re already dealing with a COVID shut down like so many other restaurants, and now they find themselves in a position where they have to rebuild.

Athens has long given back to the community, and regularly hosted a Thanksgiving meal for local homeless people for nearly a decade. Now the community is joining in to help with a gofundme page. Nina Nicola Contoravdis co-owns Athens Pizza and joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss.

“Apparently there was a fire in the ceiling of the awning on the building, and it’s an older building, so it just I guess it just spread. So Athens suffered significant smoke damage. We’re so blessed that Auburn Valley Fire Department was there within minutes, and it could have been a lot worse if if this happened overnight,” she said.

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“The center itself suffered roof damage, electrical damage, down to the studs. Everything has to get ripped out on the top of the roof, the awning. So it could be a least six months, and with COVID, we just don’t know if it’s gonna proceed longer. that’s another reason why the gofundme was started by customers and a friend of my sons.”

The business was just hanging on before the fire, due especially in part to the ongoing support of the community and loyal customers.

“Auburn is such an awesome community, and we have such loyal customers that have been coming for decades. Business was actually decent. We were hanging on, we were getting through it. We were doing take-out only. We just actually were in the process of a 300 grinder order at the time of the fire. So my husband, Bill, remembered to grab the ticket to call the customer and tell them that’s not gonna happen,” she said.

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“We were we were doing okay, we were getting through it. The support from the community and the car dealerships and the businesses in the area–everyone supported us, so we were blessed to be hanging on and getting through it,  hoping this would just pass and get back to normal and have our dine-in service.”

To help support Athens Pizza, head here.

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.