Fire destroys Bottles Unlimited.

Just yesterday I pedaled past the site of the B & B Bar & Grill and paused to watch the cinderblock construction as a new building rises at the corner of Culbertson and 15th. I'm assuming that the owners are rebuilding. Does anyone know for sure?

Then, word came this morning that Bottles Unlimited has burned, too: Downtown New Albany liquor store destroyed by fire.

Bottles Unlimited went into business in the early 1980's. As with Scoreboard Liquors on Spring, a big part of its business came from Louisvillians at a time when Kentucky's archaic liquor pricing laws remained in effect. Until Bottles arrived, Scoreboard had the off/on ramp monopoly, and the freshly minted package competition highly annoyed Scoreboard's owner (and my boss at the time), the late Jim Creech.

My youthful opinion at the time was that Scoreboard should relinquish the price-driven trade and go upmarket with higher quality selections, tastings and information unavailable elsewhere. It was the strategy subsequently pursued, albeit a decade or more later, by the Bairds at their Old Mill shop on Charlestown Road. But of course it was Jim's money, not mine, and anyway, I always intended to pursue other possibilities -- and on occasion actually did. He stuck with his business plan, and more often than not, got beat at it.

Soon afterward the Kentucky laws changed, and the playing field leveled. Bottles still had the superior first-past-the-post field position, and in 1988, Scoreboard lost its lease and moved uptown, where it sputtered to a halt in the late nineties. Jim died five years ago, and I miss him. Had the timing been different, I still think we could have put our heads together and come up with a way of reinventing the liquor store for a different market.

Amid the steadily improving urban clutter around Elm Street and State at the I-64 ramp, Bottles Unlimited has been a successful, productive, long-term business. Will it rebuild? Catastrophes like this often serve as opportunities, and this one might afford Bottles Unlimited a chance to reinvent itself downtown, and become part of a fresh wave.