A longtime Nashville business has risen from the ashes and reopened after a fire destroyed everything early last fall.

On Sept. 18, just before Nashville’s busy tourist season, the Carmel Corn Cottage went up in smoke. Everything was destroyed, said owner Jim Rispoli, except for some racks in the back room.

Rispoli had spent a month popping popcorn and preparing for the autumn influx of tourists. He was at home north of town when he received multiple calls and texts about the fire, raced back to the scene, and watched as firefighters worked to put out it out. Dozens of onlookers also gathered, worrying that other nearby buildings also would catch if the flames couldn’t be contained.

The fire ended up being inside the walls and attic space, “not anywhere you would see in the room right off the bat. You have to open up a wall and ceiling. It took a little bit of time to get into to get it actually fully extinguished,” Nashville Fire Chief Nick Kelp said at the time.

The building was owned by Bruce Williams and Larry Hawkins. Rispoli had been in the process of buying it; he had owned the business since 1998, but not the structure.

The Carmel Corn Cottage reopened on April 15, and Rispoli was handed the keys as the new building owner on April 20.

It took six months to get up and running again, and now Rispoli and his team are prepping for the season ahead. With a brand-new air popper, new soda machines, an ice cream cooler, a slushie machine and more, Rispoli said it was a disaster that turned into a sort of blessing.

“Everything except me is new,” he said.

The Carmel Corn Cottage, on Nashville’s busy Van Buren Street, celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2018. Rispoli had bought it from the Pope family, who started it in 1978. At that time, they only sold cheese and caramel popcorn along with some Dillman Farm products, like jams.

Rispoli introduced many different flavors of popcorn — from caramel, buttery toffee and cheese to pickle, maple, bacon and Splenda (light) — and added baked cornmeal as an option for customers who can’t eat popcorn.

All the popcorn is popped in the store using an air popper from the 1940s.

“We’re keeping it as close (to the original) as possible,” he said. “Customers are glad to be here. We get so many compliments that we’re back.”

He said he couldn’t have rebuilt and reopened without his store manager, Tonya Fowler, who’s been there for eight years. Another employee who had just started 10 days before the fire, Tony Sanchez, is working there again, too.

“We’re looking for business to be as good as it was before,” Fowler said.

“It’s exciting to have tourists come in from across the world, some from across the country,” Rispoli said.

“We mainly just want the community to know that we’re back open, up and running. Come in and take care of your sweet tooth.”