SOUTH PORTLAND – Three years ago, when Tom Howard added a dining room and function center to J.P. Thornton’s Bar & Grille, the popular deli and pub he owns at 740 Broadway, he ordered an $80,000 mahogany bar, made in Hartford, Conn.

“I told them I wanted it to look turn-of-the-century, like something that came off the Titanic,” he recalled last week. “The ironic thing is, I was nearly flooded out of business.”

It was one year ago, on Sept. 6, when a sudden water main break sent thousands of gallons rushing across the parking area in front of Howard’s restaurant, where water rose as high as vehicle floorboards. That would have been bad enough, but the deluge caused sewer lines to back up, leading gray water to bubble up through floor drains behind the mahogany bar and causing diners in the restaurant at the time to scurry out the back door.

“It was just one of those things,” said Howard. “Forty feet further on down the road and the water would have gone another way, and all this would have been somebody else’s problem.”

“All this,” as Howard euphemistically puts it, amounted to more than $1 million in damage and lost sales, along with about 12 jobs he’s been unable to restore to the 50-person staff he had before the incident, which closed J.P. Thornton’s deli and sandwich shop for five days, the pub for a week and a half, and the main dining room and function center for eight months.

But on Friday, Sept. 6 – one year to the day after the flood – Howard will hold an official grand re-opening, kicking off with happy hour at 6 p.m., followed with a performance by a local band, Pete Witham and the Cosmic Zombies.

Although it might be nice, Howard does not expect anyone from the Portland Water District or South Portland City Hall to attend the event. To this day, not one hint of an apology has come from either entity.

Still, neither Howard nor his dining room manager, Mike Corey, harbors any resentment.

“We’re not upset with the water district, we’re not upset with South Portland, we’re not upset with anybody, we want to make that very clear,” said Corey. “We don’t want to be negative in any of this.”

“We’ve been through some tough times, but we’re going to make this thing work,” said Howard. “We just need to get the word out that we’re still here and that the dining room is opened up again.”

The dining room has actually been open since May, but business is only about half what it was before the flood.

“It didn’t help that when we finally were able to get reopened, it was right in the middle of what, for us, is dead season,” said Corey.

J.P. Thornton’s, he notes, is not a typical tourist destination. It caters to locals, who tend to be away or busy with other things during the summer, and return as regulars in the winter. But after being closed last season, the dining room and function center is not the hopping place it once was, despite a complete makeover.

“Because it was closed for so long, my business on Friday night is now just a fraction of what it was before,” said Howard, “Unfortunately, a lot of people are creatures of habit and they’ve been slow to come back.”

“We’ve got a great room that’s all new, with everything you could ever want,” said Corey. “All we’re missing is the people.”

Howard said he lost about $100,000 in product and damage. An insurance policy he thought included $25,000 in damage insurance and $25,000 in business interruption coverage turned out to be $25,000 total. That, he says, was used to cover payroll and routine bills. The property owner, Jim Talbot, used his own insurance to pay a $20,000 ServiceMaster bill to clean up after the flood, which included drying out the walls, which had soaked up much of the water, to prevent mold from forming. Howard then dipped into his own savings to repaint the walls and lay new carpet.

South Portland City Manager Jim Gailey confirmed Tuesday that he worked with the city’s economic development committee to offer Howard gap funding from a revolving loan fund, usually reserved for start-ups. However, because that fund only matches a percentage of needs a bank won’t meet, Howard says it was no good to him, because he couldn’t get a bank to touch his operation.

“Under those conditions, I couldn’t get anything,” he said. “I couldn’t get anything from a bank at that point, I was right up against the ropes with no collateral, nearly out of business. Thank God the property owner stepped in with his insurance to take care of some of the damage, because that would have killed me.”

Howard said he considered suing the Portland Water District, but was advised doing so would only put him further in the hole, in lost attorney fees.

“I went to a lawyer and said I wanted to sue the water district. He said, ‘you can’t win. The water district, they’re the Teflon kids. Don’t even bother,’” Howard said.

A claim filed by Howard’s insurance agent was denied, said Water District spokeswoman Michelle Clements.

Howard thought he might have had a case, because the incident that shut him down was one of a series of nine water main breaks that occurred in the two-week period, from Aug. 25-Sept. 14 of last year. Six of those breaks, including the one on Broadway, remain unexplained to this day.

A Sept. 17, 2012, report issued by the water district blamed one of the breaks on “hydrant use” by the city. Two others were caused when excavating equipment – one machine piloted by South Portland Public Works, the other by New England Utility Contractors – hit buried lines. The remaining six, including the 112-year-old cast iron pipe that burst beneath Broadway at 6:36 p.m. at the start of J.P. Thornton’s Thursday dinner rush, were listed simply as, “undetermined.”

In the report, the district’s director of water services, James Wallace, found “no system-wide pressure surges immediately preceding the leaks” and “no unusual activity” at the water treatment facility in Portland that would have contributed to a system failure.

“What is clear is that there appears to be no negligence on the part of the district that contributed to any of these leaks,” wrote Wallace.

Howard, however, has his own theory. He says a fire at 554 Main St. on Aug. 15, 2012, complicated by a hydrant issue, caused the water district to “ramp up the pressure” throughout the system, leading to the rash of water main breaks.

Clements denied any culpability on the part of her agency, and Fire Chief Kevin Guimond said the problem with the hydrant was that it was hard to open, requiring “three men and a boy.” Water pressure, he said, was never an issue. “South Portland has more water pressure than anywhere else in the system,” he said. “That’s never been a problem for us.”

“The breaks had nothing to do with water pressure,” said Clements. “There was no negligence on the part of the water district in terms of this break.”

“My lawyer did talk to their counsel and nothing ever came of it,” said Howard. “The bottom line is that everybody got paid and, although I lost 12 employees, about 20 percent of my workforce, we’re still here.”

To celebrate the grand re-opening, executive chef Paul Dyer says he is designing a new seasonal menu that will focus, going forward, on fresh Maine ingredients.

“We have a farm up in Bethel where we are getting our proteins and we’re doing more home-style cooking, by doing more in-house, like brining our meats for corned beef and reubens instead of buying things that are already processed,” said Dyer.

“We’re also going to be trying some new things, like wine tastings and a comedy night,” said Corey.

“I’m just happy to see that a great local business has weathered the storm and seems to be coming back stronger than ever,” said Gailey.

If there is an upside to the year-long trauma, Howard says, it’s that he was able to buy out a partner, who found the cash-flow issues complicating lending for her other business interests. Howard was able to get her 40 percent stake in the restaurant for $1, he said.

He could have walked away as well, Howard says, but that was never really an option.

“I have a huge investment in this place. I couldn’t just let it go,” he said. “I named this place after my mother Joan Patricia Thornton when I opened a decade ago, and when you name something after your mom, you’re not going to give up on it easily.

“I’m committed to this place,” added Howard, with a broad smile, one of the few he’s been able to manage in the last year. “They’re going to have to put a straight jacket on me to get me out of this place.”

A CLOSER LOOK

J.P. Thornton’s Bar and Grille, located at 740 Broadway in South Portland, will hold a grand re-opening of its main dining room Sept. 6, one year after an overflow of effluent caused by a water main break under the road closed it down, leading to more than $1 million in damage and lost sales. The celebration begins at 5 p.m.

The leadership team bringing J.P. Thornton’s Bar & Grille, located at 740 Broadway in South Portland, “out from under the water” includes, from left, owner Tom Howard, executive chef Paul Dyer and Mike Corey, manager of the bar and restaurant, which will have a re-opening celebration Saturday, Sept. 6.Paul Dyer, executive chef at J.P. Thornton’s Bar & Grille, located at 740 Broadway in South Portland, shows off one of the many dishes on his new, Maine-based menu slated to debut by the second week of September.