AUBURN — After being closed for a month, Lotus Restaurant on Center Street has reopened.

Owners Jimmy and George Wu voluntarily shut the restaurant down June 22 after several cockroach sightings and complaints.

Jimmy Wu was one of the the complainants, and he knew something needed to be done. So they closed the restaurant to assess the problem. He said initially they thought it would only need to be closed for a few days to do pest control, but it ended up staying closed for just over a month.

Lotus officially reopened July 25 after a major renovation. “We basically rebuilt it. It looks the same, but it was basically gutted,” George Wu said. “We took a little more time to make sure it’s done the right way.”

Each drywall panel connected to the kitchen was torn down and replaced, the dining room, bathrooms and kitchen were redone, and the kitchen was reworked completely. The stainless steel was taken out and replaced.

George Wu said it was “a quarter million dollar reinvestment in the community.” At that cost, he said they could have just built a new restaurant, but they wanted to stay in that location. “We grew up here in Auburn, and we wanted to stay here.”

Wu said the interior was designed by a local designer, and they wanted to keep that. “We were really serious about fixing the problem,” he said. “The walls were taken down as a preventative measure to make sure we don’t have something like this happen again. Everything looks the same but it was a lot of work.”

Lotus hired Jason Feugil of 1-800 Water Damage to come in and do a deep, thorough clean. Feugil has been back nearly a dozen times during the remodel, and will be back quarterly for staff training. They also hired a pest control company to come in and clean, said George Wu.

One of the new cleaning measures they’ve taken is turning over the booth seats and cleaning them every night.

George Wu said the public support feels amazing. “We’ve always treat our customers like family, and to feel that support back is great. The support to reopen has been overwhelming, could not be more thankful to our guests and family.”

“We’ve only been open again for a week now, and we’re excited for more of our guests to return. We’ve missed them, and our staff has missed them.”

He said it was hard to be closed for so long. “We lost a lot of stuff, we had to throw out all of our food,” George Wu said. “We took care of our employees while we were closed, kept everything else going with the remodel, and kept an active line with customers. We’ve served a lot of guests in our time, and we’re happy to be open again.”

They had a soft opening last week a few days before they reopened fully. Wu said he thought they would be ready but didn’t anticipate how busy it would be. They also had to special order a lot of their ingredients because they use more spices and seasonings in order to be MSG free.

When we originally we did a lot of community events with local organizations. As time went on we didn’t do that as much, but we want to get back to our roots

He said they’re working on a project as part of their reopening, but haven’t nailed down the plans yet. “This is how we want to go from now on, to do more local events to support the community.”

Lotus Restaurant on Center Street in Auburn has re-opened.

Lotus Restaurant removed each drywall panel connected to the kitchen during its remodeling.

Lotus Restaurant removed each drywall panel connected to the kitchen during its remodeling.