How high did water get at The Pump House? Enough that it’ll take a few days to reopen

In almost a decade serving diners from a converted pump station on the Catawba River, Colby Mosier has seen the water levels rise high.

This time was different.

The Pump House had nine feet of water inside it due to flooding from Tropical Storm Helene. It reached the top of the elevator. There had only been one other time the Rock Hill restaurant at 575 Herrons Ferry Rd. saw significant flooding, five years ago when the water was a foot deep.

“This is a lot worse,” said Mosier, who co-owns the restaurant with Ell Close.

The restaurant closed on Friday and wind and rain swelled the river. On Saturday they posted it be closed until Monday. On Monday afternoon, workers shoveled silt and dumped debris with an excavator.

It likely will be Thursday or Friday before the restaurant could reopen, Mosier said.

“Our entire staff is out there,” he said, pointing past muddy sidewalks to the restaurant where servers and kitchen staff starting cleaning at 7 a.m. Monday.

Mosier and Close also run Drift on Lake Wylie , a boat-up restaurant in Belmont, North Carolina, that’s also on the Catawba River. Drift wasn’t damaged and isn’t in a floodplain, Mosier said. Each restaurant has about 85 employees.

The ownership team bought the Pump House site a decade ago and opened the upscale restaurant in 2016. Built to provide water for the Celanese manufacturing site nearby in the 1940s, the Pump House building draws diners and a bar crowd with its elevated views of the river, just south of the U.S. 21 bridge. That location also means the restaurant can’t get flood insurance.

Mosier pointed to a dumpster Monday afternoon where he guesses $50,000 worth of ruined material now sat. But reopening is only a matter of when, he said.

“It’s a big project,” Mosier said. “We’ll get through it.”

Pump House damage

The Pump House will have to go through all the sanitation and inspection procedures any restaurant would. The elevator will need repairs. Coolers and freezers never lost power and the food operations are on upper levels, but plenty of food spoiled and will have to be restocked.

Three custom benches that probably weighed 400 pounds each were washed away into the river, Mosier said. Portable restrooms and other items nearby in the Riverwalk area were damaged.

Even on Monday afternoon, the gate halfway down a small boat launch warning people not to use it was only barely visible as water rose almost to the top of it.

The high water line reached the Pump House mailbox. Standing 50 feet or so from the restaurant where caution tape keeps anyone who isn’t cleaning up away, Mosier describes water that would’ve been up to his neck at the same spot just days earlier.

Riverwalk businesses hit too, but not as hard

Nearby businesses, though, were more fortunate. Dog Bites Muchery & More is closest to The Pump House. Water reached the bottom of five steps leading into that store.

“I was more fascinated by it than anything,” said employee Alida Ellis.

Dog Bites had some cancellations when the storm hit, so some employees were able to watch the water rise at the riverfront trails and amphitheater just in front of them. The water didn’t rise quickly enough for Ellis to feel she was in danger.

Since the storm hit, Dog Bites actually got a bump in new customers.

“It’s really wild, but people come by here to check out the water and they say, oh, I didn’t know there was a dog place here,” Ellis said.

Grapevine wine bar and wine shop is next door to Dog Bites.

“The amphitheater was up to the top step,” said Grapevine worker Charles Holmes. “It was totally full.”

Holmes points out where the water reached in front of his place, but didn’t have water come inside it. Holmes, like Mosier and Ellis, wondered Monday about the potential for more rain or additional water flowing down from the North Carolina mountains. Holmes understands why dams let water run all at once, as some areas saw catastrophic flooding.

He’s just hopeful it won’t happen again.

“I hope they stagger it,” Holmes said.

Other areas like Brakefield at Riverwalk , another Mosier property, weren’t impacted.

The Riverwalk trail is closed. While the water mostly follows the footprint of the river now, it’s still flowing fast enough to at times whitecap on its way by Riverwalk.

The only help neighbors can offer The Pump House is to watch for information on the reopening, and to come have a meal when they can.

“It’s a lot of messy work,” Mosier said. “We’ll get there.”