Water main break closes Osborne Village institution

A water main break on Osborne Street in Winnipeg has forced a long-standing Village institution to close its doors.

Basil's Restaurant closed on the weekend after a broken water main sent water cascading into the buildingat the corner of Osborne and Stradbrook Avenue.

A sign on the door to the restaurant reads: "A water main break has seriously devastated our restaurant. Closed until further notice."

Residents in the area told CBC News a wave of water came crashing down the back alley early Monday morning. The water burst through the restaurant's foundation, completely flooding the basement and creeping up half a metre on the main floor.

The restaurant's first floor, where patrons were served, is covered in silt; the basement, which housed washrooms, staff facilities and office space,is filledwith asmuch as 30 centimetres of mud.

"Stuff from my filing cabinets, you'll see the paperwork is stuck on the ceiling," said owner Basil Lagopoulos. "That's how high, how hard the water came in."

The restaurant's owners are now focused on cleaning up the mess, said co-owner Donna Lagopoulos, Basil's wife.

"It's not the way we had perceived an ending, if that's it, or how we'd perceived to make changes in the restaurant. I mean, Basil's is always making changes, but this is kind of a major renovation to be done which we hadn't counted on," she said.

Considering future

Seeing the business he's grown and loved for 32 years in ruins is almost too much for Lagopoulos to bear.

"I'm devastated. I'm in shock. And I'll have to think very hard about this whole thing," he said.

"I would like to reopen, but it will take quite a few weeks, I think, before anything can come to any kind of normalcy."

The flood put about two dozen employees out of work. The restaurant's workers are like a family, Lagopoulos said, noting that many were in tears when they saw the damage.

Several other restaurants on the Osborne Village strip including Carlos and Murphy's and Wasabi were also closed Monday night, and a thick layer ofice madenearby streets and sidewalks in the area virtually impassable.