WATERLOO -- Ordinarily, a restaurateur forced to shut down his establishment for eight weeks, due to massive flooding, might have concerns about reopening after so much down time.

But there are apparently no such concerns at Waterloo's Brown Bottle.

The venerable restaurant, a fixture in downtown Waterloo's historic Russell Lamson Building, at 209 W. Fifth St., since 1974, is reopening this week, nearly two months after the rampaging floodwaters of the Cedar River inundated downtown streets and buildings.

The rising water never actually touched the restaurant, even though it is on the ground floor of the Lamson Building. But the restaurant lost all its inventory that was stored in the building's basement.

For Chuck Landau, who also operates Doughey Joey's Peetza Joynt downtown, the return of the Brown Bottle answers a popular question.

"Everybody has been asking when we were going to come back," said Landau, who has bee at the Brown Bottle since 1980 and owned it since 1987. "The support has been great."

The precise date for reopening the venerable eatery still was a moving target, as final preparations were still underway, Landau said.

"We were shooting for (July 21), but we just rolled it back because we didn't want to rush things," he said.

The next target was July 24, but some glitches with the electrical system forced Landau to delay the reopening for Monday.

"We should have everything ready by then," Landau said.

They weren't major hurdles, though, he said.

Certainly not as daunting as getting the restaurant going again, he added.

The Brown Bottle was more a secondary victim of the flooding, although the restaurant, in a sense, took the same kind of blow as did many businesses who were under water, Landau said.

""We didn't sustain any physical damage upstairs," he said. "But, until about 10 days ago, we didn't have any power up there. Since then, we've been doing repainting, redoing some furniture, as far as wait stations; doing a once-over with ceiling tiles and bathrooms' giving the place a kind of a facelift."

Not that the closure wasn't painful -- Landau said it probably cost the restaurant around $200,000 in sales.

But, he said, the flood-induced closure provided an excuse to make some needed changes in the facility.

"It's some of the stuff you've always wanted to do over the years but didn't do," he said. "You try to look for silver lining in everything. We're excited because some of the changes we made will be an improvement. It's kind of fun to see the finished product."

There's also plenty of perishable ingredients to replace, Landau said.

"It's like starting a new restaurant," he said.

What won't have changed is the menu, Landau said.

"Not at present," he said. "I'm sure in the future we'll be making some menu changes, but now, we're worried about getting the old ship afloat. We'll see what works and what doesn't and probably do some menu changes then."

What he says he's not worried about is winning the old clientele back.

"I don't believe that will be a problem," he said. "We've been getting inquiries about when we were going to reopen. We'll have some expenses, as far as getting the word out but."

Landau estimated about half of his customers are regulars.

"You almost know them all by name," he said.

The layoff doesn't appear to have cost the business many of its employees, either, Landau noted.

"We've put a call out, and we've got about a 98-percent response on coming back," he said.

The "silver lining" to which Landau referred helped sustain him during the long layoff, he said.

"We're just grateful we didn't get any water," he said.

Contact Jim Offner at (319) 291-1598 or jim.offner@wcfcourier.com.