Common Man founder rebuilt after ’00 arson

March 06--Firefighters battle a building fire at the Common Man restaurant in Windham in 2013. (Union Leader file)

Common Man founder Alex Ray can appreciate what Mint Bistro owner Tim Baines is experiencing as his downtown Manchester restaurant undergoes repairs for flood damage.

Ray has been through it before. In 2013, the Common Man in Windham suffered fire damage, which closed the business for more than a month. An electrical fire smoldered in the space between the original roof of the 200-year-old farmhouse and the new one the company had built on top of it.

"The fire damage was relatively irrelevant. It was the subsequent trying to completely chase down the fire through all of the roof," Ray said. "The water damage was huge, all the way through three floors. It wasn't a tragedy luckily, but it did take five weeks to do the whole thing."

That's just a blip compared to the stretch Ray faced in 2000 when the Common Man in Lincoln burned to the ground -- the target of an arsonist later convicted of torching several buildings.

The Lincoln restaurant's home, like the one in Windham, was a converted farmhouse and one of the oldest properties in town. Ray was faced with rebuilding it just as construction of the Common Man's new restaurant in Concord -- the company's biggest yet -- was nearing completion.

The fire had occurred at 11 p.m. when no one was in the building, Ray said, but he still had to contend with taking care of the 100 people who worked there.

"Now we were in a rough situation. We had lots of help for the summer. So we shifted them around to all the other restaurants," said Ray, whose company includes nearly 20 restaurants, including two new roadside eateries at the Hooksett Welcome Centers on Interstate 93.

Fire gutted the Lincoln structure, which didn't have a sprinkler system. About the only thing left standing was a big fireplace chimney, Ray said. Builders were able to reclaim the basement and foundation.

"We opened eight months later with a completely new building that looked like the old building in every way, which was both the house and the barn. That was pretty exciting," Ray said.

While working on the reconstruction, Ray chose to work with the insurance company, negotiating as needed.

"We had all these guys called private investigators, which come and try to take over the case and fight your battle. We don't have that chemistry makeup," Ray said. "We said 'No, we'll work with the insurance company.' And it was a positive experience. A lot of guys enter into litigation after a fire. That's not the way it's done. You have to make sure you have a good policy, and a good company, and secondly work with them, not against them."

When it was time to reopen, the company hosted a celebration at the rebuilt restaurant as both a thank- you gesture and a way to reconnect with customers.

"We went out of our way in Lincoln -- not in Windham because it was a relatively short time -- but in Lincoln to have a thank you to the fire department, to the police and to all the people who helped rebuild the place," Ray said. "That was a way of celebrating our return, making a big thing of it. We had a free dinner. I think we had 600 people there, a crazy night.

"It helped to remind people that we were back. And they have an empathy for it. They liked us in the beginning or they wouldn't be our customers. And they came back to see it. I was kind of thrilled. It was a very positive experience."

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