Early Sunday morning hours were just the end of another shift for the employees at Pita Pit.

“Gyro, double sauce,” said an employee at the cash register after taking an order.

“Gyro, double sauce,” echoed back another employee at the grill.

A line wraps around the corner of the serving station at 114 Welch Ave. The hiss of the grill and music seems to dance with the laughter and yells of patrons coming in and out on semi-wet floors.

Employees quickly stuff pitas to move the line along.

“Thanks for coming,” yells an employee from the back of the restaurant as people leave.

Fourteen hours before, Pita Pit wasn’t ready to serve a gyro with double sauce, and the floors were a little more than semi-wet.

“We got here at 11 a.m. and it looked like it was raining,” said Patrick O’Malley, general manager of Pita Pit.

Almost two inches of water stood in the main dining room. The tables and chairs were pushed to the back of the restaurant. Ceiling tile pieces lay on the floor soaking up water. Others were dangling from the ceiling, dripping water and chunks of plaster onto the floor.

“We hope to open tonight,” O’Malley said when he saw the damage. “We’ll reopen in a day at the most.”

Lynn Lloyd, property manager for 114 Welch Ave., said the power had been turned off in an unoccupied suite adjacent to Pita Pit’s suite, which caused pipes running in the building to freeze and burst.

According to The Weather Channel, Saturday’s low was -11.

The adjacent suite has been unoccupied for five months. The last business to occupy the space was Arvelle Computers.

“It baffles me that [the city] turned off the electric,” Lloyd said. “[The city] turned off the electric without our knowledge.”

Lloyd said the city might have been confused between the two suites and shut off power to the wrong one.

She called ServiceMaster of Story County to clean up the water, and she also had to call in emergency contractors in order to fix the damage to the walls and ceiling.

Lloyd said she did not have an estimate of the cost of the damage, but was confident it would be taken care of by insurance.

“It was just amazing the amount of water that came out,” Lloyd said.

Pita Pit, which opened Jan. 9, didn’t lose any perishable food but did lose some paperwork in the office.

O’Malley said the damage is not as bad as he thought.

Lloyd said Cocost Express Cuisine, 114 Welch Ave. Suites A and E, also received a lot of water damage but was cleaned up by employees before ServiceMaster arrived.

Lasting Impressions Tattoo Studio, 114 Welch Ave. Suite C, didn’t receive any damage.

City officials were unavailable for comment.