The Webb Road Flea Market has been a destination off I-85 for travelers and residents alike since 1985, and history has proven it takes more than fire to close the beloved institution.

On Sunday, Dec. 15, at 3:40 a.m, the fire alarm in Building B at the market went off, and firefighters began arriving to battle the blaze that, in the end, destroyed that building and nothing else.

After a fire in 2010 destroyed the entire market, owners changed things up in the reconstruction, and those changes paid off.

According to General Manager and family member Chris Stephens, the new design incorporated some natural fire breaks.

“In the original construction, the buildings were all connected,” he said. “This time, we built a central breezeway, and the buildings are angled where they meet that breezeway, and both of those create natural break points.” He added that a wind the morning of the more recent fire also helped because it was blowing away from the breezeway rather than back toward other structures.

As of now, fire officials have said the fire was not intentional, but the full cause has not been released.

By the following Saturday, the debris from the burned building had been cleared away, the area roped off for safety, and all vendors were back in business before Wednesday’s Christmas holiday.

Stephens said the market owners do plan to rebuild, but the form rebuilding will take has not yet been decided. But they are hoping to reuse the concrete slab that remains, which was not damaged by the fire.

He also said of the 20 vendors affected by the fire, all were offered alternate places when the market reopened, and at least a dozen came back.

“Some were not ready, because they didn’t have more inventory yet or for some, they just wanted to take a break,” said Donny Pressley, who is the daily operations manager for the market. Pressley was a vendor himself for more than five years before taking on the management job two years ago.

Pressley added that vendors at the market are like family, celebrating birthdays together and taking care of one another, even though “80 percent or more of our vendors have full-time jobs elsewhere.” They are a connected unit, supporting one another, and after the fire, several vendors have come together to offer a percentage of their sales to help support those who lost all of their inventory right before Christmas.

Pressley and Stephens said many of the vendors have been at the market for more than 20 years, some more than 30, and currently there are no spaces inside the enclosed buildings for rent. There are currently 250 indoor vendors, and in the spring and summer on good weather days, there can be upwards of 500 vendors counting those inside, those in covered stalls with open walls, and those entirely outdoors.

“Those don’t come up often,” said Pressley referring to indoor spaces, but there are outdoor spaces available and there are always a few daily rental spaces open.

There have been some questions about why the buildings were not rebuilt to include sprinklers, and Stephens explained that the assertions that the market sought and received an exception to sprinkler requirements are not correct.

“The code requires that any building larger than 12,000 square feet have a sprinkler system,” he said. “Our buildings are less than 12,000 square feet, so sprinklers were never required.” Pressley confirmed that the buildings were built to be 11,800 square feet. the North Carolina State Building Code 2009 edition does confirm that sprinklers are only required “where…fire area exceeds 12,000 square feet.”

“The one variance we did get was for the requirement to insulate and heat the buildings,” Stephens said. “But that has nothing to do with the fire.”

Stephens added that the owners did get an estimate of the cost of adding water lines and sprinklers and the cost for even one building was so prohibitive that “we wouldn’t be a flea market anymore. Vendors might as well go rent a space in a mall, because the cost would go through the roof.”

One of the benefits of flea markets is they allow sellers to operate a small business without the heavy overhead of an actual brick-and-mortar store.

Stephens said the most important thing to him and his family members who operate the market is to make sure the vendors have a safe and open space to sell their wares.

“No vendors, no market,” he said. “They are why we are here. We recognize how hard it has been on those who suffered a loss, and we wanted to reopen as quickly as possible, for them and for all the vendors who are counting on Christmas sales.”

On Saturday, one week after the fire, the cold winds did keep some shoppers away, but the market was nonetheless buzzing with activity and it grew busier as the morning passed. The market remains open each weekend, throughout the year, on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.