“I Will Rebuild”

Standing by the shards and burnt interior of his uninsured laundromat, Angelo Reyes vowed to return to business — and avoid the hunt for the arsonist.

“I will rebuild. I’m going to bring it back up. I’m not going to go out like that,” Reyes, who’s 49, said while surveying the wreckage four days after a blaze at the the People’s Laundromat at Lombard and Downing streets.

“This is most of my life here. This was my only cash cow. I’m not a happy camper, dude. This is my my net income here. This is my personal puppy. I’m not going to take it sitting down.”

But, Reyes said, he also ​“gave a lot of people my word”: He won’t go looking for the person who lit what the fire department terms a ​“suspicious” blaze that wrecked the interior of his building and required 44 firefighters to put out last Thursday night. Instead, he’s going to focus on restoring the business.

His eyes welling with tears, Reyes declared, ​“I just don’t want to do anything stupid. I don’t want to be the one behind the bar — I don’t want to be the one saying, ​‘Damn I should have done it a little differently. I should have been a little more patient. I should have let the law handle it.’

“I can’t be Superman anymore.”

But he can be a businessman. Reyes has spent the last decade turning his life around from jailed drug dealer to Fair Haven’s leading rebuilder of homes and commercial property, a civic leader promoting rebirth of the neighborhood’s main commercial corridor. He has renovated and sold 80 homes to working people in Fair Haven. He opened two successful laundromats, the first of which was People’s. He’s in the process of reviving storefronts and offices on Grand Avenue.

What happened last Thursday set him back, hard.

“Everything Was Smoke”

Reyes got the call at home at 8 p.m. on Thursday night. The call came from an employee mopping the laundromat, preparing to close for the night while two customers finished drying their clothes.

“There is a smell coming out of here,” she told Reyes.

“Well, get out!” he remembers responding. ​“Get out! Call 911 and get out!”

She did. He called, too, then rushed over. ​“Everything was smoke. Everything was gray, black smoke. I couldn’t even see through the windows.”

Reyes ran upstairs to the two apartments he rents above the laundromat, kicked down the doors. Thankfully, the tenants weren’t home.

Meanwhile, the fire department went to work. It sent five engines, two heavy-duty rescue trucks, and a paramedic unit to the scene. Forty-four firefighters took turns battling the blaze before dousing it, according to Fire Marshal Joe Cappucci.

Then the arson squad got to work. Investigators found ​“some type of liquid in red gasoline containers,” Cappucci said. After poking around, the team concluded that it looked like an arson job. Now the squad and police Det. Joe Pettola are investigating the case. No suspects yet, according to Cappucci.

The fire department called Reyes around midnight with the news about the signs of arson. He immediately granted investigators access to all the premises. Cappucci said Reyes has been completely cooperative since.

A Gamble

Reyes knows that some people immediately assumed he lit the fire himself to collect on insurance. (The Register, which doesn’t pre-screen readers’ comments, even published anonymous allegations to that effect on its website.)

Beside the fact that he would’t burn down a building, and despite the fact that he had an employee and customers inside, there’s another problem with that theory, Reyes said: The premises weren’t insured.

He spent a half-million dollars over the past decade to put 98 washers and dryers in the laundromat, he said. Now at least half of that investment is gone, based on his survey of his inventory. Not to mention the cost of rebuilding the inside.

Reyes said he was on the verge of paying off all his debt on his inventory. It usually takes about 10 years to reach that point and then make good money, he said.

“In less than one hour, everything is lost,” he said. ​“Everything.”

What happened to the insurance?

In January, Reyes said, he needed cash to complete work on the commercial buildings he’s restoring at 254 – 260 Grand. In the past he has had to turn to unconventional lenders, who charge high interest rates, to borrow money for projects; he was tired of paying 10 percent interest. He gambled, the way developers sometimes do, using capital or collateral from previous projects to fund new ones. He decided to cancel insurance on some buildings from January until this month to fund the Grand renovation.

The strategy worked — until last Thursday. The Grand Avenue buildings were completed. But now Reyes has his first commercial investment, People’s, to rebuild.

Nightmares

Another rebuilding project hangs in the balance, as well — Reyes’ ascent from youthful drug-related incarceration.

He spent the ​’90s building up his home-restoration business, then the commercial building business. He still works 18-hour days. In addition to volunteering his time in Fair Haven, he has worked to get a state pardon.

He had a hearing date coming up for that pardon when he found himself in trouble with the law again this past June. He broke up a fight involving a man allegedly stalking his tenant. Reyes ended up being charged with breach of peace, imperiling his pardon bid.

So when he heard that the blaze at his laundromat last week appeared to be a case of arson, he knew he had to keep himself in check. He didn’t want to blow it again. He had to let the arson investigators do the job.

His mind turned to people who might be angry enough with him to try to burn his place down. He hasn’t figured out which person that would be.

“I’m not going to go around” looking for ​“everybody who doesn’t get along with me,” he said. ​“I’m this close to success. I’m not going to do something to mess up. I learned a lesson” with the breach of peace incident.

The lesson doesn’t come easily for a scrapper accustomed to having his destiny in his own hands. He’s had trouble sleeping since the fire, Reyes said. ​“I have these bad dreams of what I’m going to do to someone. Then I wake up and remember what I can’t do.”

“We all have it in us,” he reasoned.

After the fire, the Red Cross placed one of Reyes’ tenants in a hotel room. Reyes said he expects to find him a new place by the end of the week. Reyes found his other tenant, his employee, an apartment elsewhere in Fair Haven. He said he’s buying both tenants new furniture.

The apartments, like the laundromat, will take a while to return to habitable shape.

Meanwhile, Reyes is directing his customers to 238 Grand Ave., which is his other laundromat. The washers and dryers are spinning just fine over there.