By Todd Feathers, News Staff
Demetrios Pseudoikonomou, owner of Cappy’s Pizza & Subs, stood outside his business 11 months ago and watched as firefighters struggled to put out the flames engulfing his restaurant’s roof.
Next to him, a tenant in one of the apartments he owns above the restaurant cried as burning embers dropped through a broken skylight into her room.
“I got a phone call saying there was a fire on the roof,” said Pseudoikonomou, who graduated from Northeastern in 2003 with a degree in economics, as he recalled the night of the fire.
“My first thought was ‘I hope everybody’s fine,’ and then I thought ‘there goes my life.’”
Almost a year later, Cappy’s, of 82 Westland Ave. has reopened for business and students from Northeastern and other surrounding schools are moving back into the apartments above the restaurant.
The three-alarm fire, which began as the result of a faulty heating and ventilation unit, was not the direct reason Cappy’s and the apartments above it were closed for nearly a year though.
It was the fear of dangerous mold, resulting from rain damage caused by holes firefighters had to make in the walls and roof, which caused Pseudoikonomou’s insurance company to close the building for six months before repairs could begin.
Anthony Discostanzo, a junior at the Boston Conservatory, was one of the first to move back into his old apartment.
He had kept in touch with Pseudoikonomou after the fire and seized the opportunity to rent his old space when he heard the building was reopening Aug. 24.
“As soon as it burned down I was like ‘I’m coming back, this place is perfect,’” Discostanzo said.
For several weeks after he lost his home to the fire, Disconstanzo and his roommates bounced from friend’s couch to friend’s couch until they found a new apartment.
“We were homeless for about a month,” Discostanzo said. “We were all freaking out, we didn’t want a shelter – we just wanted this perfect place back.”
As tenants have filled the apartments above Cappy’s, customers have flooded the restaurant below.
On the humid, rainy Tuesday before classes started the air-conditioned interior of Cappy’s was full of students such as Klevis Xharda, a middler political science major, who says Cappy’s is the only pizza place he eats at.
“I’m pumped. I’ve been here every school night for a slice of buffalo chicken,” Xharda said.
For Pseudoikonomou, the aggravating six-month battle with his insurance company to begin construction was justified by the reaction he received when he reopened his doors. The new Cappy’s has $18,000 worth of renovations inside, including seven flat screen TVs and matching green tiles and tables.
“We changed a lot down here, everybody comes in here now and the first reaction we get is ‘wow,’” Pseudoikonomou said.
On their first day back in business, Cappy’s gave away 300 free slices of pizza to announce celebrate their return to the neighborhood.
“It was the hardest thing to see everybody as shocked as I was after the fire, people thought this was their home,” Pseudoikonomou said. “The best was when a kid comes in after we opened and says, ‘You just made my year.’”
