Shockoe Bottom has yet to completely recover from Gaston

When it rains, business owners in Shockoe Bottom remember.

Five years ago, when the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of Richmond, the runoff from half the city came racing through the Bottom—a bigger flow at times than the James River itself.

Eight people across the area died—two at Gillie Creek and one near Bryan Park in Richmond, one in South Richmond, two in Hanover County, one in Chesterfield County and one in Dinwiddie County.

For Shockoe Bottom, it has been a hard road back.

“Yeah, I notice,“ said one of the business owners, River City Diner owner Scott Poates, glancing out at a threatening, overcast sky this month. “But we’ve had some pretty hard rains—hard, hard rains—and I didn’t even get a wet spot.“

Poates’ former location, in the 1800 block of East Main Street, had water up to the countertop. He has moved around the corner, facing the 17th Street Farmers’ Market, and nods at a clock on the wall about 12 feet above the floor.

“That’s where it got to here,“ he said. “But I’ve been in the Bottom for 16 years. I’m committed,“ so much so that he has invested roughly $600,000 in his new place.

And businesses and customers are starting to come back. “It is getting better,“ Poates said.

Still, along the Farmers’ Market and the blocks of East Main Street where the waters from Gaston were deepest, more than a third of the storefronts have “For Lease” signs, or are simply dark and dusty. Such restaurants as The Kitchen Table never returned after Gaston.

“In three hours, all my savings, all my investment was completely wiped out,“ said Sosie Hublitz, the chef who opened The Kitchen Table just 10 months before the storm. Her bank had told her she didn’t need flood insurance in the Bottom, and her $700-a-month business-insurance policy didn’t cover her because Gaston was an act of God, the insurance company told her in a letter the day after the flood.

She has just opened a new restaurant, Watty and Meg’s, in the trendy Cobble Hill area of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Nineteen businesses that operated in Shockoe Bottom have sued Richmond for more than $31 million, accusing the city of gross and willful negligence in operating its drainage and sewer systems, in some cases for actions dating back more than 80 years.

But others are helping revive the business community in the Bottom.

At East Main and 19th streets, Jose Santos and Julio Chevez have been scrambling to open a new place: Aztek Grill, which will specialize in modern Latin American cuisine. They’re putting in a new kitchen and dining room, a roughly $300,000 investment.

Chevez said he’s not worried by tales of Gaston. “I think the city has the water under control,“ he said.

“We believe in downtown. We believe in Shockoe Bottom,“ Santos added. “This place has all the ingredients, like a great formula in the kitchen.“

. . .

As part of a $20 million, city-funded program, Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities installed 100 new and replacement drains in the Bottom.

“They were bigger. We had to put some in the right places. The old ones might be around a corner, where they weren’t getting the flow,“ said deputy chief administrative officer Christopher Beschler.

The city also connected the main stormwater sewer for Church Hill and the East End to connect with the city’s massive main drain, called “The Arch,“ a 17-foot-high, 29-foot-across tunnel that drains much of the North Side. Doing that took a load off the sewer that drains 64 acres of the Bottom itself. This summer, the city is digging out the retention basin at the northern end of Shockoe Creek, by the railroad tracks and Interstate 64, north of Hospital Street.

It is also finishing up reconfiguring the drain near the 17th Street start of the Canal Walk that empties the very lowest part of the Bottom.

The new arrangement should keep the Bottom’s drainage system from backing up in the very worst storms.

“We’ll have things working on the top end and the bottom end,“ said Robert Steidel, deputy director of the city’s Department of Public Utilities.

Still, when it rains, “I get a little nervous; I get the phone calls: ‘How’s it going?‘“ said David Napier, owner of White House Catering, which operates the Old City Bar in the 1500 block of East Main Street. “And I look out in the parking lot and say, ‘Well, the water’s going down where it’s supposed to.‘“

But the Bottom is still hurting, he said. It’s harder to make a new venture work.

“Things you used to do to make a project possible financially—open a restaurant downstairs with a couple of apartments up above—you can’t do anymore,“ Napier said.

The reason is a new map of the floodplain. The old one focused on the James River, now blocked by the floodwall. The new one maps areas that could be flooded if Shockoe Creek overflows and the city drains back up.

Building regulations require that emergency vehicles have access to apartments and condominiums from a point above the potential flood zone, and the new map covers much of the Bottom.

“None of this has psyched me [out],“ said Evelyn Allen, who has been working at the Allen Truck Farming stand in the Farmers’ Market for 65 years. “I’ve seen floods before.“

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .