The owners of Nolan's restaurant are making plans to reopen next year as Canandaigua firefighters sift through the debris of the charred restaurant.

Nolan's on Canandaigua Lake, 726 S. Main St., was destroyed in a four-alarm fire Thursday morning. No one was injured in the blaze, as workers had not yet arrived at the restaurant to start their workday. The employees gathered outside the burning business Thursday as more than 80 firefighters doused the building.

"Some of us stood in shock, while most of us attempted to fight back the tears as we watched all of our hard work fall one piece at a time," Nolan's co-owner Nick Violas said via a Facebook post. "It was horrifying and it was surreal."

Violas and Kate Nolan own the restaurant.

"The Nolan's team will survive," he said in the post. "We will not feel sorry for ourselves and we will be back to serve Canandaigua again. It's what we do and that will not change."

Violas said they plan to rebuild on South Main Street with a goal of reopening by April 2018. In the meantime, full-time restaurant employees will work at Nolan's at the Canandaigua Country Club for the remainder of the summer.

"All of our catering is still going," he said. "That's not going to stop."

The reopening plans will come as good news to customers such as Brian Wickham of Stanley, who has frequented the restaurant since it opened at 130 Lakeshore Drive. The large extended Wickham family even celebrated his mother’s 80th birthday party at the restaurant.

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Wickham noted that without a reservation on a Friday or Saturday night, you’d wait for two hours for a table.

“They are great business people and they put out a good product," Wickham said. "They don’t cut corners anywhere.”

Wickham was among the many people in the community who reached out to Violas upon learning about the fire, telling Violas that his heart was heavy and offered help. “We would do anything and everything for them.”

“I know the community is devastated right now, and I know I can speak for my family and for other members of the community that would love to see Nick and Kate get started with another Nolan’s as soon as possible," Wickham said.

Under investigation

Canandaigua Fire Department's acting chief Ben Cramer said the cause and origin of the blaze have not yet been determined. City and state fire investigators were working at the lakeside property Friday.

"This is standard procedure with any fire," he said. "Every fire investigation is different; it could take days, weeks or months."

A few factors hampered firefighting efforts on Thursday, such as the fact that the restaurant was not outfitted with sprinklers, Cramer said.

“There’s lots of old buildings that don’t have sprinkler systems or fire alarm systems,” said Dave LeClair, code enforcement officer for the city of Canandaigua’s code enforcement office.

Nolan's had what's called pre-existing non-conforming conditions: The structure was built before sprinkler systems or fire alarms were required, he said.

Although renovations were completed before Nolan's moved into the building in 2014, sprinklers were not added. When a building undergoes what the code specifies as major renovations, such as an addition, it triggers requirements to bring the building up to code, LeClair said. The 2014 renovations were only cosmetic, LeClair said.

“They made it look nice,” said LeClair.

Lack of sprinklers made battling the fire "more challenging," Cramer said. "But it was a pretty rapidly-spreading fire."

Firefighters also taxed the municipal water supply while battling the blaze Thursday. Cramer said firefighters used between 220,000 and 240,000 gallons of municipal water. They also drew water from Canandaigua Lake, pumping it directly from the lake to douse the burning building, he said.

Cramer said firefighters were at the scene until 10 p.m. Thursday.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, city officials will complete an after-action report on the fire.

“There is always someplace you could improve,” said Canandaigua City Manager John Goodwin. “We’ll look at it and see what, if anything, that we could do differently."

VFREILE@Gannett.com

TRACYS@Gannett.com