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After being filled with 1.5 feet of sand during Hurricane Sandy, McLoone’s Supper Club may be back in business within two weeks.

If power is restored early next week, the restaurant will still need to be inspected before it can reopen, owner Tim McLoone said. But because Thanksgiving is next Thursday, it may be difficult to have inspections complete until the following week.

The building was built in the 1950s as a Howard Johnson’s restaurant, according to McLoone. The structure’s original windows stayed intact throughout the storm while the newer windows and doors did not, McLoone said.

The biggest issue was the “dirty, wet sand, which got into everything,” McLoone said. “We lost our entire kitchen downstairs. It was 100 percent wiped out.”

The restaurant has an event area and full kitchen upstairs that was largely untouched, McLoone said, so they may open the second floor restaurant first while continuing to repair the first floor.

Once power is restored, the restaurant will likely reopen about five days later, Helen Doyle, who is the vice president in charge of development for McLoone’s company, said.

McLoone owns eight restaurants in total, with one in Sea Bright and one in Long Branch. The Long Branch restaurant, located in Pier Village, reopened today, but the Sea Bright location, Rum Runners, will likely be closed for a while, McLoone said.

That restaurant’s upper deck pulled away from the building in the storm, and the main building filled with about five feet of water, McLoone said.

Reopening area restaurants could be good for the morale of everyone affected by Sandy, Doyle said.

“These are our businesses and our livelihood but it’s nothing in comparison to what some people are going through,” she said. “It’s our thought to get the restaurants open because people just want to get back to normal. They want to be able to say, ‘Let’s go to McLoone’s on Friday night,’ or, ‘We always go to Sunday brunch at McLoone’s in Asbury Park.'”

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