Downtown Businesses Reopen Following Outage

After more than 48 hours without power, things are getting back to normal for many businesses in downtown Sioux Falls. 

It's much warmer Monday in the Phillips Avenue Diner.  Power wasn't restored to the downtown business until Sunday afternoon, which means it didn't reopen from Friday's outage until Monday morning.

"Yeah, [it's] business as usual.  We're back; we're happy about that," General Manager Mark Gillespie said.

While the power was out, workers at the diner kept the situation from getting worse by moving cold and frozen food to refrigerated trucks.  That kept it from spoiling.

"MCT, Midwest Coast, they really helped us out with a couple refrigerated trucks.  We really lost minimal product.  It wasn't as big of a loss as it could have been without their help," Gillespie said.

In fact, Gillespie says because of those efforts, they lost very little product and were able to offer a full menu to their customers right away Monday morning.  But getting ready to reopen wasn't easy.  The staff put in a long day Sunday to be ready.

"It was a lot of work and an unfortunate loss of sales and revenue.  Everyone pooled their resources and we bounced back.  It's just one of those things we couldn't avoid and we're just glad to be back open," Gillespie said.

And it's an experience Gillespie says he hopes they don't have to go through again.

Those who work at the Phillips Avenue Diner also say it's nice to have the road open once again and to have more people back downtown.  However, there were a few road closures Monday as Xcel crews finished up their repairs.