WARWICK, R.I. - Smoke Clean of New England, Inc., Southern New England’s leading family-owned disaster restoration specialists and foremost provider of restorative drying and air quality control services, marked its 40th anniversary with the purchase of a new state-of-the-art facility located at 40 Minnesota Avenue in Warwick. A “private preview grand opening celebration” was held early Wednesday evening, February 16, 2011. About 100 new and long-term customers, vendors, insurance agents and adjusters from throughout the New England area attended the sneak-peak open house event. A formal ribbon cutting ceremony for the new property is scheduled for later this year.
Smoke Clean’s Vice President, Mike Pomeranz,, who runs the company’s Rhode Island day-to-day operations and who is also a member of Smoke Clean’s third generation, along with his younger brother Justin, said, “The fact that we were able to secure this larger, new facility, along with investing in the latest state-of-the-art cleaning methodologies and equipment reflects our strong regional growth over the past 40 years and our successful diversification in the commercial cleaning industry in New England.” His father, Jack Pomeranz, who is President and who has owned the company since 1981, strongly agreed.
“2011 is a key milestone for Smoke Clean of New England, Inc. As we celebrate our 40th year of operations, it’s important to note that we have come a very long way over the past four decades,” Jack emphasized. “We have grown the scale of our business, diversified the scope of our offerings and significantly expanded our coverage area. My entire family will continue to work together to research and develop the diversity of our service offerings in an effort to provide trustworthy, innovative, effective disaster restoration solutions to our clients throughout New England.”
Since its inception in 1971, the company has largely grown from a small carpet cleaning service established by the company’s founder, Sumner Pomeranz, father of Jack and his brother Joel. After attending a seminar on steam carpet cleaning, which at the time was considered revolutionary, the elder Pomeranz got the novel idea to shift the business to a more lucrative and steady insurance-based work; working on call 24/7 to focus on smoke and water damage remediation caused by residential and commercial fires. Hence Smoke Clean of New England, Inc. was born. Sumner passed away in 1997.
The idea to expand the business via air duct cleaning and mold remediation came when Sumner and his son, Joel moved to Florida in 1979 and found the hot, humid climate ideal for providing air quality control cleaning services. The new division, Clean Air of America, was headed by Joel, and was added to Smoke Clean’s New England operations as well. Joel moved back from Florida in 1997 to open an office in Taunton in order to expand the Rhode Island business into Massachusetts.
At that time, according to Joel, people were becoming more and more aware of toxic mold and how it adversely affects health. Entire households were being abandoned due to toxic mold because of how sick it was making people and their families. “People’s dream homes were becoming their worst nightmare. As a result, mold prevention, remediation, and air duct cleaning became an increasingly popular service,” said Joel. Asbestos Abatement is also classified under Clean Air of America service offerings.
As of today, largely due to the expertise of Mike Pomeranz, a business graduate from the University of South Florida who spent the majority of the nineties in the mortgage industry in Florida, the company is split into three distinct service divisions: Smoke Clean of New England, Inc., which handles fire, soot, and smoke damage, Restorative Drying, which handles large-scale water and flood restoration, and Clean Air of America, a division of Smoke Clean of New England, Inc. that manages mold remediation, air duct cleaning, and asbestos abatement.
A recent addition to Clean Air of America’s services is death scene and bio-hazard clean-up and odor removal. A special distinction is that Clean Air of America’s technicians are specially trained in this area and are one of the few companies in the New England area that has technicians certified by the American Bio-Recovery Association (ABRA).
“As we continue to grow, we remain committed to continuing to provide the highest level of service our customers have come to expect from us and will always put our client’s needs at the center of everything we do in order to make it easy and effective for them to do business with us,” Mike said.
