It's Ciao Time for Vanished Store Owner

 by Ronald Drenger

David Herriman had quite a pleasant shopping experience in June at Leonardo & Rees, a seller of Italian-made furniture at 345 Greenwich St. He drank an espresso. He chatted in Italian about Florence, the owner’s hometown. And he ordered $4,800 worth of furniture for his Manhattan apartment—the store’s specialty was reproductions of modernist designs. The store even threw in an extra table for free.

The floor and shelves of Leonardo and Rees have been empty since July 16. Photo by Carl Glassman

The next month, he called to check on his order. No answer. He e-mailed. No reply. Suspicious, he hopped in a cab to Greenwich Street. This time, there was no espresso waiting for him.

“Lo and behold, the place was empty,” Herriman recalled last month. No information was posted on the door. And when Herriman called American Express, he found out that the store had charged the $4,800 twice.

On the night of July 16, Leonardo & Rees, open just eight months, had been cleared out. Not an armchair or a chaise longue remained. And Angelo Resta, the owner, was back home in Italy.

What Resta left behind were a lot of angry customers.
Lisa Pack, an interior designer from Westchester, ordered two Barcelona chairs in March and paid the $2,600 in full. The chairs were supposed to be delivered by her June 21 wedding, but whenever she called, she was told the shipment was delayed. Her wedding passed. Finally, she decided to go back to the store.

“My heart sank when I saw it empty,” she said.

One of Leonardo & Rees’s two former managers, who was fired by Resta a week before the owner disappeared, estimated that as many as 75 paid orders may have been left unfilled.

Guido Zwicker, co-owner of Zwicker Collective/Pescepalla Docks, a design studio and gallery next door on Greenwich Street which closed this month, estimated that at least 20 Leonardo & Rees customers who were waiting for furniture had come into his store by the middle of last month seeking leads on Resta’s whereabouts.

Others have called the Tribeca Organization, which promotes local businesses and of which Leonardo & Rees was a member. Some have left angry notes on the store’s door.

Not only customers were left empty-handed. Resta owed rent to his landlord and money to Zwicker, who had helped Resta set up his shop and designed a logo and ads for him. Resta’s former manager, who asked that she not be identified, said that three paychecks Resta gave her just before firing her had bounced.

Robert Pattison, who lives across the street from Leonardo & Rees, delivered furniture in his truck for Resta and says he is owed about $3,000.

And then there’s C-Air, a customs broker in Valley Stream, which cleared several furniture shipments through customs, but then tried in vain for several months to collect on its $3,000 bill.

“In a way, I’m lucky,” said Rick Morana, who handled the Leonardo & Rees shipments for C-Air. “I brought in 11 couches and I was thinking about buying one of them myself.”

Last month Resta’s landlord, Michael Waldman, put a sign on the store’s door asking people who had not received their furniture to call his office, where an assistant collected information for possible legal action. Waldman did not return calls seeking comment.

In the middle of last month a notice was also posted on Leonardo & Rees’s website advising customers to call a company attorney, Jennifer Dodd.

Dodd, of Briguglio & Associates, declined to comment to the Trib.

Pattison said the lawyer told him that Resta “had some cash flow problems and will pay me back in September, which I got a laugh out of.”