Two unrelated floods have left the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant by the College Park Airport indefinitely closed, the restaurant’s office manager said.
A pipe in the restaurant froze and burst in mid-January, and a defect in its sprinkler system left the building with two feet of standing water Sunday and “severe water damage,” office manager Erin Keegan said.
The restaurant, one of the few upscale dining establishments in the city, is located on Paint Branch Parkway. College Park City Council members frequently bemoan the lack of non-chain, sit-down restaurants in the city, which is dominated by student-friendly chain, fast food and takeout restaurants.
“It’s a unique place in College Park to eat, in that it has such pleasant surroundings,” District 3 Councilwoman Mary Cook said.
Keegan said the restaurant would definitely reopen.
“We’re undergoing restoration at this time,” Keegan said. “We don’t have a date at this time for reopening, but we are reopening.”
She added it would be at least two weeks before the restaurant’s management can even determine the extent of the damage from the flooding and estimate when renovations will be complete.
The restaurant, which is a popular venue for groups and events, had not updated its website to reflect the closure.
Keegan said management put a sign on the restaurant’s front door to inform customers of the damage but said the website is controlled only at the restaurant chain’s corporate level.
Calls to the California-based Specialty Restaurants Corporation, which owns the 94th Aero Squadron chain, were not returned yesterday.
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