WATERLOO - June's whopper of a flood may have forced scores of downtown businesses to shut down, but it also provided a made-to-order opportunity for the operators of the Burger King, at 109 Jefferson St., to rehabilitate the aging restaurant - their way.

"This restaurant has been here since 1993, and it was coming time soon to do some work on the interior of the restaurant," said Mark Malenchik, owner of Rockford, Ill.-based Rock King Limited Partnership, which owns four Burger Kings in Waterloo, one in Waverly and three more in Rockford. "I think the flood obviously pushed us over the edge."

Malenchik and his general manager, Tim Maletta, opted to rehabilitate the downtown restaurant from top to bottom.

"It probably made the scope a lot bigger, whereas we probably would have piecemealed it," Malenchik said. "We would have done it little by little and gotten it done over a six- to nine-month period, versus two months and two weeks. Tim and I had talked many times about rehabbing this location. June 10-12 changed all that."

Indeed, when the floodwaters rushed through downtown Waterloo, the restaurant took on 4 feet of water, and the owners had no choice but to start anew.

"We had to redo all the interior," Maletta said. "A lot of equipment needed to be replaced. At one point, we decided to completely regut and remodel."

The closure has cost the restaurant more than $300,000 in sales alone, Malenchik said.

Maletta said the rehab work has cost around $350,000.

A payoff for the 2 1/2-month closure is coming: The downtown Burger King is scheduled to reopen at 10 a.m. Aug. 26.

Regular customers - both operators say there are a lot of them - will see a dramatically different interior, Maletta said.

"The dining room is completely different," he said. "It was a '50s-'60s theme and now it's more contemporary."

A black-and-white checkerboard floor pattern is gone, replaced by a pattern of brown shades.

"It's got a lot of earth tones and bright colors mixed in with it on the walls," Maletta said. "All the kitchen equipment is the most modern now. From the bathroom to the storages to the dining room, everything was completely redone."

The restaurant's seating capacity remains at 76.

Would-be customers are eager for the grand reopening, Maletta said.

"Actually, even with the Dumpster out front and with all the construction going on, we have people walk in every day, look around and ask, 'Are you open?'" he said.

The pair retained most of the 40 employees whom the flood washed out of work back in June, Maletta said.

"Most of the people we just took to the other stores and kept them working while this one was being redone," he said. "But, we've also hired some additional staff."

The restaurant will be open 24 hours, a schedule it had taken up in May, Maletta said. The operators say the restaurant was a solid performer before the flood, and it should be at least as dependable after it reopens.

"All of our restaurants do extremely well, and this one is kind of in the middle in terms of volume of business," Maletta said. "But all of them are well above what the average Burger King does."

The downtown traffic is a dependable source of revenue, said Malenchik, who also owns three Burger Kings in Rockford.

"Anything happening downtown and being next to Highway 63, we've got plenty of traffic going by this location every day," he said. "The thought of not reopening because of the flood never came into our minds."

Nor has any doubt about bringing in longtime customers, he said.

"The big thing will be getting all the stuff cleaned up on the outside," Malenchik said. "That will help dramatically. I think the word will spread fairly quickly that we're going to be reopening."

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