By SHELLEY OWENS

Earlier this summer, Chris Russo, founder of the Hurricane Grill & Wings chain, remarked that it was a shame that the location where it all started had closed. The store, at 2017 Seaway Dr. in Fort Pierce, reopened on Saturday.

“We were slammed,” said Allison O’Connor, who opened the store with partners Bonnie Turk and Rob and Kristi Kluba.

“A year ago, if you told me I was going to own the original Hurricane Grill in Fort Pierce, I would have laughed,” she said.

“Bonnie and I are from Fort Pierce and we used to spend every Friday here when it was Chris’ Hurricane,” she said. “I remember Chris back when he was in the kitchen and we were customers. He used to come out and chat and we would taste new wing sauces.”

O’Connor and Turk taught in the St. Lucie County Public Schools for a number of years but never got the Hurricane Grill out of their system, she said. “When they started the franchise, we knew we had to be franchisees.”

Unfortunately, the Fort Pierce franchises were already taken, O’Connor said. And the corporation, which Russo had sold, did not want to sell a franchise to people they were not sure would succeed. “We were teachers, what did we know,” O’Connor said. “But we taught students. We could teach staff.”

They wrote a letter to Russo, who remembered them and advocated for allowing them to open a franchise, she said. The Jacksonville territory was still open so they moved north three years ago and opened a Hurricane Grill & Wings.

When they learned the original Fort Pierce store was available, they came down and snapped it up. The partners had photographic murals of the Fort Pierce inlet placed on the walls so, no matter where you sit, it feels like an inlet-view table, O’Connor said. “When we were driving down to look at it, Rob Kluba, another Jacksonville franchisee, wanted to come with us,” she said. “When we came over the bridge to south beach, he said ‘Wow, this is paradise.’ He and his wife Kristi became our partners.”

Although they still have a franchise store in Jacksonville that they visit frequently, O’Connor and Turk, who never sold their Fort Pierce homes, are elated to be home.

“We get so emotional,” O’Connor said. “Everything I do I get emotional. … Bonnie and I are thrilled to be back.”