HUNTERS POINT — The Waterfront Crabhouse, a beloved Long Island City restaurant that closed earlier this year after decades in the neighborhood, is making a comeback.
The team behind local eateries SHI and Skinny's Cantina will be taking over the shuttered Borden Avenue space to reopen it as a seafood restaurant using the same Waterfront Crabhouse name, according one of the owners, Joseph Licul.
In an email, Licul said his team will be renovating the space and that they are in the process of designing the restaurant and developing a menu. They are hoping to open by the end of the year or in early 2016, he said.
Local blog LIC Talk first reported the news.
The Waterfront Crabhouse, located at 2-03 Borden Ave., opened in the late 1970s and was run for decades by owner Tony Mazzarella and his family.
Over the years, the restaurant endured a fire as well as flooding during Hurricane Sandy, but was able to rebound and reopen a few months after the storm. Loyal patrons at the time of its reopening in 2013 called the restaurant "a wonderful place to come" and said it felt like home.
The Crabhouse closed its doors this past February, a month after Mazzarella's death.
Licul said he's leasing the restaurant from the late owner's family, but that they are not directly involved in the eatery's new iteration.
Meanwhile, Queens Community Board 2 plans to name a street corner near the restaurant after Mazzarella, who was active in local charities as well as the New York boxing scene.
