Suspicion of arson deepens anguish of shop owners
Families struggle to rebuild businesses
NORTHBOROUGH - Bruce Terry is past the mourning and on to the next phase.
"Mad. I'm kind of angry," said Terry, co-owner of O'Brien's Five & Dime. The 55-year-old general store was one of five Northborough businesses in a West Main Street strip mall that were destroyed by a March 25 fire that investigators have deemed arson.
"I do want it solved," said Terry. "They can't give us our store back. But we need someone to blame it on. It will help us heal if we can blame somebody."
David Brown, whose father founded the adjacent Brown's TV and Appliance in 1960, said he shares Terry's feelings. His last few weeks have been consumed with parsing insurance policies, he said. Initially, he was heartbroken, he said, but now, dealing with the paperwork, he can be resentful.
"That was just more insult to injury," said Brown. "It's one thing to have a fire completely wipe out your way of life overnight. But to find out someone set it is just another kind of thing you don't want to hear. I didn't feel too great about that."
Owners of the shops destroyed in the fire said they've been dealing with two consequences of the blaze. As they struggle to rebuild, or assess whether they can rebuild, they also are coping emotionally with losing the family-owned businesses that knitted them into the fabric of the town.
"We have a very loyal customer following," said Terry. "They're missing us as much as we're missing them. I've gotten packages from kids. One little girl sent me a letter with a dollar bill. It's people reaching out that keeps us going."
The local Rotary Club's fund to help the store owners has raised around $10,000, said Andrew Dowd, Northborough's town clerk and a club member. The service organization has given each business $1,000 so far, Dowd said. Pictures of O'Brien's and the other stores drawn by Northborough schoolchildren have been posted on the windows of shops that remain in the strip mall.
But those efforts, while appreciated, don't help much when it comes to dealing with insurance companies and the headaches associated with losing a business, owners said.
The proprietor of Northborough Desi Supermarket, Mohammad Sajid, said he did not have insurance. Luckily, a $35,000 freezer he had purchased a week before the disaster survived. But he wasn't sure if he could raise the money or find a location he could afford to reopen in Northborough, where he has a customer base.
Sajid sells lentils, spices, and other staples to the area's growing Indian immigrant community. "Right now I'm unemployed," he said. "We really don't know. We're just hanging in there. It's a very tough time for us."
After the fire, officials from various state agencies and the nonprofit Massachusetts Small Business Development Center, based at Clark University in Worcester, offered help. But they can often do little more than offer advice and information about such services as unemployment benefits, Sajid said.
Larry Marsh, director of the Small Business Development Center, said businesses destroyed in fires might wait six months to two years before they receive insurance money. The delays stem in part from the difficulty of compiling data lost in the fire itself. Documenting inventory, expenses, client names, and other details can be a nightmare if a business stored most of its records on the premises, he said.
To make matters worse, while owners wade through that process, their income has usually disappeared, Marsh said. Since most of the businesses in the strip mall were family-owned, they had small payrolls. But their other bills haven't gone away.
"Usually the most pressing need is the most hardest to fill - immediate cash," said Marsh. "A quick $25,000 can do wonders. Getting access to that kind of capital is a problem."
Marsh said one business owner from the burned-out strip mall, whom he declined to name for confidentiality reasons, has approached the business development center. Marsh was able to offer advice on details that might be lost in the wake of catastrophe, such as making sure the telephone company forwards calls to another number. Otherwise, customers would hear only a phone that keeps ringing, unanswered.
"All of those seem like obvious things," he said. "They're not so obvious when you have a hundred things jumping at you."
The owners of the shopping plaza are also coping with financial and emotional losses. Five days after the fire, the mall's owner, William Maney, passed away. He was 81.
His son, Paul, said the fire and his father's death were unrelated. Maney had been battling cancer, and his health had been declining rapidly before the fire occurred. "The first thing he said was he felt sorry for them," he said.
Paul Maney said his sister, Sandra Farrell, was handling the strip mall business for the family. Farrell intended to rebuild but was busy helping their elderly mother clear up William Maney's estate while dealing with insurance companies, he said.
The assessed value of all the buildings in the strip mall was $2.74 million, according to town records. Half of the mall was undamaged by the fire.
Northborough Fire Chief David Durgin and a spokesman for state Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said they could not discuss the investigation into the fire, which was deemed likely to be arson within several days of the blaze. "Everybody is just working and it takes a while to build a case," said Durgin. "Everyone's working."
The fire marshal's office is offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who gives authorities information that leads to solving the case.
Brown said he expects to rebuild his business in Northborough. Plasma televisions have been on the market for a few years, he said, and are going to start breaking down soon. They're expensive enough to make it worthwhile for people to bring them to a repairman, he said, and so he envisions good times ahead once he gets back in business.
Terry said he and his business partner wanted to rebuild, but they first needed to find out how much they would receive from an insurance settlement. In the meantime, he said, even the days of the week are reminders of what's missing.
"Monday morning is the worst," he said. "You want to get up and go to work. I'm losing myself in my yard. I'm doing all the things I wanted to do and never had time to do."
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