Boubacar Diallo is back in business, $125,000 in the hole but optimistic, after watching his inventory burn in December’s downtown fire.
Diallo this week reopened New Haven Furniture Plus in a storefront at the Cambridge Apartments building at 296 Whalley Ave. The store was one of the businesses destroyed in the three-alarm Chapel Street blaze on Dec. 12.
A Senegalese native, Diallo had enough insurance to cover only $150,000 of his $275,000 losses in that blaze, he said. On Wednesday, though, his mood was bright, as was his new showroom, as he spoke of looking ahead rather than back. In addition to bedroom and living room sets, he sells gadgets like phone handsets and cellphone chargers.
The day of the fire, a friend called Diallo around 7 a.m. at his Hemingway Cove home off Quinnipiac Avenue.
“You have a fire downtown. I don’t know if it’s your store,” the friend said.
Diallo rushed to Chapel Street to discover his store engulfed in flames.
Since then, he focused on getting back to work. He gives credit to city government economic development staffers Michael Pinto and Clay Williams for helping him finding a new location, partly though linking him with people like Sheila Masterson of the Whalley Avenue Special Services District.
“I’m a believer,” Diallo said. “If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. You have to deal with the reality. You don’t have to cry. Something happens, you move on and try to find a solution.”
Diallo first came to New Haven in 1995, briefly, in his role as an official with Senegal’s Special Olympics organization. He was living in D.C. in 2000 when he married a Senegalese woman who’d spent 19 years in New Haven; they decided to settle here. According to a one-page bio Diallo drew up, he “has served in various ministries and cabinets of the Senegalese government… [and] holds Senegal’s track record for the 100, 200, and 400… [He] has a B.A. in Physical Education, a PhD. in Sociology from the Universite Paris VII. Fluent in Wolof (his ethnic language), and French, Boubacar also speaks English and is taking up Italian and Spanish!”
Wow! He's a great success, despite the fire. His attitude, ambition, and perseverance seem something to be reckoned with. I had never heard of his store before the fire, but now feel I must visit it, if not to buy furniture, to support him specifically. We need more people like him.