Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Water damage, not coronavirus, caused this Las Vegas restaurant to collapse

Major Renovations after

Steve Marcus

Owner Javier Barajas and his daughter Stephanie stand by a dining area at Lindo Michoacan Mexican restaurant, 2655 E. Desert Inn Road, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. The restaurant is doing major renovations after a leaking pipe created a “sinkhole” that threatened the building’s integrity.

Major Renovations after "Sinkhole" under Lindo Michoacan

Owner Javier Barajas stands in a dining area at Lindo Michoacan Mexican restaurant, 2655 E. Desert Inn Rd., Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. The restaurant is doing major renovations after a leaking pipe created a Launch slideshow »

Javier Barajas probably wouldn’t mind if the calendar had flipped straight from October to December this year. November was a bad month for the Las Vegas restaurant owner and his family.

“I’m scared of this month now,” Barajas said Tuesday at the shuttered Lindo Michoacan restaurant near South Pecos Road and East Desert Inn Road.

In early November, employees noticed an ominous crack in a wall in the main dining room at the popular Mexican restaurant, which has three locations in the Las Vegas Valley.

The situation deteriorated quickly, as a leaky pipe under the building led to a sinkhole that began to destroy the foundation, Barajas said. The floor eventually collapsed.

After closing on Nov. 14, it became clear something was very wrong, said his daughter, Stephanie Barajas, the restaurant’s general manager.

“You could hear the popping and the breaking sounds,” she said. The restaurant has been closed since then.

On Tuesday, much of the floor in the building was gone, including in three separate dining areas and part of the kitchen.

A Clark County spokesman said building inspectors have visited the restaurant and that “the structure of the building appears to be fine.”

But the concrete slab the building sits on will have to be replaced and the plumbing prepared before the business can reopen, county officials said.

Javier Barajas said it will likely be at least several months before the restaurant reopens. In the meantime, about 80 employees will be out of work.

Stephanie Barajas said an architect who inspected the slab said the water could have been leaking for months or years.

Javier Barajas said it has not yet been determined how much of the damage will be covered by insurance.

“We’ll survive this; we have no choice,” he said, noting the business survived a major fire in 2002 and the recession in 2008.

“It took a long time to get over that. This time, it’s two things — coronavirus and this,” he said.

“You never expect this kind of thing to happen,” he said. “We never noticed any water or anything. Hopefully, we’ll be back soon.”