FAIRVIEW PARK, Ohio — The doors to a beloved restaurant in Fairview Park are temporarily closed and the timeline of reopening is out of the restaurant owners’ hands.
Opening up Omar’s Family Restaurant at 22250 Lorain Road was a dream come true for Katie and Nedal Kenan.
“We were driving down Lorain Road and I saw this spot and I thought it was really, really nice beautiful for a restaurant,” said Katie. “We decided that we would rent this place and in July of 2019 we opened to the public.”
Nedal is the mastermind behind the food.
“We sell Italian food, Greek food and, of course, Middle Eastern food, so it’s all Mediterranean stuff,” she said. “We opened up as Omar’s Pizza and Mediterranean Grill and after we started putting more items in I said ‘Let’s just do Omar’s Family Restaurant.’"
Even Fairview Park’s Mayor, Patrick Cooney, is a regular customer.
“The staff is wonderful, friendly people and the food is fantastic,” he said.
As small business owners, the Kanan's expected some bumps in the road but since they opened, they have had a lot on their plate.
“Things were going okay and then we got hit with COVID and we were closed for a little bit of that and then in February of 2022 we had a lot of leakage and problems with water damage so we had to close down for about three weeks,” said Katie.
At that time, the roof partially collapsed. The city of Fairview Park issued a violation to the landlord of the property. Mayor Cooney said that violation was resolved in a proper amount of time.
But Katie said the issues with the roof persisted over the next year. At the beginning of February, the water leakage had gotten so bad that water was seeping into their electric breaker and Nedal suffered from electric shock when he touched it, worried about the danger, they called city building inspectors and the fire department.
“They said this is too much of a risk, this is too dangerous. They called the electric company and they pulled the electric to the building,” said Katie. “We have been out of business since Feb. 2.”
Mayor Cooney said at the time of pulling the electric, the city gave the property owner another violation but since Omar’s temporarily shut down, the imminent danger is no longer present and the property owner has 30 days to fix the problem.
“The danger has been removed. We are monitoring it. The landlord has been in contact with our building department about his efforts to address it and we will be in contact with him,” said Cooney. “We’ve told him what he needs to do, how he goes about doing that is up to him.”
News 5 contacted the property owner over the phone who said repairs to the building will begin next week, however the Kanan's are feeling frustrated.
They’ve temporarily laid off their six full-time employees and don’t know when to tell them or their customers that they can return.
“We’re out all February and then March with this kind of weather, so I don’t really know,” said Katie. “I would just like to tell them that we are really looking forward to serving them again and seeing them gain because we love doing this and I hope we can get back to it soon.”
Mayor Cooney said the city will be out at the property in the next couple of weeks to see if any progress has been made.
Katie and Nedal will be posting updates on their Facebook page and urges anyone who is curious about the re-opening timeline to call 440-588-1011.
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