McHenry restaurant Vickie’s Place reopens following Christmas flood

Vickie Clawson hadn’t had five days off from running her restaurant, Vickie’s Place in McHenry, for about seven years.

But with the 2022 Christmas holidays falling on a Friday and Saturday and being closed Mondays and Tuesdays, she decided to close down for five days in December, right as a cold snap hit McHenry County.

When she returned to work at 1211 N. River Road on Dec. 28, Clawson discovered a 1/2-inch copper water line on the second floor had burst and was raining water into the kitchen.

“We had a foot of water in the crawl space,” she said, and water spread throughout the building. It’s believed that the pipe had been spewing water for at least three days.

Instead of a long weekend, the restaurant she’s owned and operated for the past 38 years was closed until Aug. 8.

“We had planned for five days, not 7½ months,” Clawson said.

There might have been one sign that something was wrong, but Clawson said she didn’t realize it until later. She drove through the parking lot once during that long, cold weekend, noticing a handwritten sign on the front door announcing the temporary closure had slid down the glass.

“We had planned for five days, not 7½ months.”

—  Vickie's Place owner Vickie Clawson

“I thought, ‘That is weird’ that it fell off the door. It didn’t occur to me it was because of the humidity in here,” Clawson said.

They had to gut the entire kitchen and office, Clawson said. “We had to take the floor and shelving out of the upstairs and rebuild the entire kitchen.”

There is good news. Her business insurance has covered most of the damage. Although final costs have not been totaled, her estimate is about $350,000 worth of repairs.

The repairs took longer than expected, Kim Blough said. She’s worked for Clawson for 13 years and stayed on for most of the renovation project.

She helped paint and do other work both inside and outside of the restaurant as construction inside continued.

“I never thought it would open. We watched every month, every holiday go by,” Blough said.

They were able to open for a few hours on St. Patrick’s Day weekend so they could be a part of McHenry’s ShamROCKS the Fox celebration. At that point, they were told “two weeks” until they were open for good, Blough said.

“It was two more weeks forever,” Clawson said.

Clawson’s insurance agent, Chad Beth at Beth & Rudnicki in McHenry, talked her down from the point of giving up more than once, Clawson said.

“A couple of times when I was at my worst, I called my insurance agent, three or four times through the construction process, crying every time,” Clawson said.

Every time she called, he solved the problem she was frustrated with, Clawson said.

They were able to replace a majority of the kitchen equipment and refurbish a few pieces, too. The air conditioning, stove, grill, steam table and sandwich tables were replaced, many with more energy-efficient models, Clawson said. She’s waiting to see the next electric bill to see if it made a difference for that expense.

Now reopened with a new kitchen, Clawson said she hopes there will be no burst pipes in the future. The door to the second floor office was removed to make sure warm air circulates throughout the A-frame building.

Diners are coming back as they hear Vickie’s Place has reopened, Clawson said.

“We did intensive training, and everyone was very patient. We have a great staff, a great environment and great views,” she said.