AKRON, Ohio (WOIO) – Some Akron businesses are still getting back on their feet after the city was hit by severe storms and flooding a few weeks ago.
The Noisy Oyster in Merriman Valley in Akron partially reopened on Monday.
“I was just speechless because it’s a neighborhood hangout,” said customer Joe Czalkiewicz. “Everyone comes here several nights a week and it was terrible to see it close.”
Rob Himmelright has been coming to this popular meeting place for more than 30 years.
“I’ve been here so long,” Himmelright said. “I’ve been here for four floods and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Not only was the place flooded, it was also filled with mud.
“The water level rose to almost two feet at the highest points, and another foot of mud remained in various places,” said Jonathan Curtis, owner of Noisy Oyster.
Curtis and his crew have spent the last two and a half weeks cleaning up the mess.
“We kind of invented the process as we went along,” Curtis explained. “The first step was to get the mud out and clean it if it was dirty. If it was broken, we tried to figure out how to fix it. That’s kind of how we went about it, a lot of trial and error, a lot of twiddling our thumbs and moving on.”
Curtis says the cleanup cost tens of thousands of dollars, but community support made a huge difference. Customers set up GoFundMe pages and several other businesses held fundraisers.
“Tiki Underground, Merriman Valley Pizza, and we were allowed to set up booths at Akron Porch Rocker and a few other places, Frank’s Place, Ray’s, to sell our shirts,” Curtis said.
The restaurant reopened on Monday, but only half of it. The closed half has structural damage and the floor is uneven.
A building contractor even had to build a partition wall to allow at least the other half of the restaurant to be open.
“I don’t know how he’s going to handle half of it being open,” Himmelright said. “That’s a problem, I think. It’s kind of sad, so we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re hoping for the best, but maybe he’ll find another place to go, I don’t know.”
Despite a lack of space and an uncertain future, Curtis is happy to be open at all, especially since several other restaurants in the area, such as Bricco’s Pub, are still closed.
“Just hang in there and accept any help you can get,” Curtis said.
At this point, Curtis doesn’t know when the rest of the restaurant will reopen; it could be weeks or even months.
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