After a more than six-month closure, a North Shore, Hamilton Parish service station is back in business after a major refurbishment after storm damage a year ago.

The Crawl Hill Esso Tiger Market shut earlier this year so that a canopy, damaged by Hurricane Franklin, could be replaced.

It was proposed that it would be closed for a month, but according to Joseph Marable, who runs the business with his partner, Lorna Dixon, the building’s owners Sol Petroleum decided to take advantage of the closure to carry out more work.

The business reopened just before Cup Match.

“Initially it started out as just the canopy and we were anticipating being closed for only a month,” said Mr Marable.

“But the building’s owners decided to go ahead and upgrade the lighting inside the store and put in new LED lighting, so it is much brighter.”

The wiring and old galvanised pipes were also upgraded and new pumps installed on the forecourt.

Mr Marable, who said he thought the building was about 30 years old, added: “It has been an overall facelift. It made sense to go ahead and do it all now instead of doing the additional work at a later date.”

He thanked the community for its support during the closure.

“We’ve always appreciated that the community has been supportive of us — and we’ve always tried to be supportive of the community,” he said.

“Even going into the nearby MarketPlace to do some shopping, customers would stop me with encouraging words, saying ‘I can't wait until the petrol station opens, we miss you guys being open’.

“I can’t thank the community enough for being so supportive. We’ve always tried our best to hire people from the neighbourhood if we could and we have always tried to run the service station as a community-based business.”