Restaurant owners angry over repeated intersection floods

Evangelia and Phillip Antoniadis are furious with the city after their restaurant sustained extensive flood damage Tuesday afternoon.

The family owners of Kisovos Bar and Grill, formerly Cheesetoast, told 650 CKOM Wednesday they asked city crews for help as water poured into the restaurant from the flooded intersection of Taylor Street and Broadway Avenue.

“People kept driving through the intersection, the waves were coming all the way into the kitchen,” Phillip said.

He tried to get city crews who were on-scene at the intersection to close it down completely and prevent traffic from going through, but they wouldn’t.

“They said they had to wait for another crew to arrive to tell them what to do,” he said.

After, Phillip said he tried to park his truck on the road to force drivers to slow down, so the wake created by the vehicles wouldn’t be as intense.

But crews told him they would tow the truck.

At one point Evangelia confronted the crews, who then laughed her off.

Video taken by a flood repair team shows water cascading into the restaurant’s basement, leaking through the main floor above.

The family recruited all the help they could get, and stayed up through the night to try and get all the water out of the restaurant.

“We have so much damage, we don’t know what we’re going to do,” Evangelia said.

The owners of Kisavos set up several machines to help dry the carpets of their restaurant on Aug. 9, 2017.

An adjuster was scheduled to view the damage Thursday, but the Antoniadis family estimates the cost is around $100,000.

While they’re insured, the couple said past flooding experiences have led to a $25,000 deductible.

“The city has to do something, the roads keep flooding,” Philip said.

He added the intersection caused a minor flood in the restaurant on July 10, 2017, while a major flood swamped the business 2009.

At a news conference Wednesday morning, Galen Heinrichs, Saskatoon’s water and sewage engineering manager, answered questions about the city’s plans to manage flooding in the area.

He said there is a business plan being presented to city council later this month on storm water management improvements to the Adelaide and Churchill neighbourhoods.

However, the intersection of Taylor Street and Broadway Avenue isn’t on the list of areas to be improved.

“That (flooding) caught me by surprise,” Heinrichs said. “Its never been brought to our attention as one of the severe intersections for severe flooding.”

Asked why crews didn’t close down the intersection due to deep water, he said he wasn’t certain as to the specific circumstances yesterday.

“In the times I’ve dealt with flooded intersections, its been the police or fire department that have closed the roads,” he said.

“If you put a couple barricades up, people will go around … but if you put a police cruiser there people will stop driving.”

The Antoniadis family is hoping for more immediate action though.

“What if it rains tomorrow? We could flood again,” Evangelia said.

A sign was placed on the door of Kisavos Bar and Grill on Aug. 9, 2017, turning customers away due to flood repairs. (Chris Vandenbreekel/650 CKOM)

She noted she tried taking matters into her own hands, driving down to city hall Wednesday morning and demanding a meeting with Mayor Charlie Clark.

“I cried all night, I was upset and wanted answers,” she said. “But he wouldn’t take the meeting.”

The mayor’s office said Clark wasn’t at city hall when Evangelia arrived, and they directed her concerns to the roadways and utilities department instead.