NEW YORK (AP) – After 19 days of a strike that darkened Broadway, the constellation of businesses that feed off the theater district are planning for an uplifting revival as shows reopen.

“The phone has been ringing off the hook,” Joe Allen, whose eponymous restaurant saw its sales plummet about 30 percent, said Thursday. “There are a lot of smiling faces.”

Many restaurants were considering layoffs and reducing employee hours as revenue dropped precipitously during a period in which the city was supposed to be flooded with free-spending tourists here for the holidays.

The city comptroller said that strike cost the city about $38 million or $2 million a day.

“We were taking a huge hit,” said Christian Ponsolle, who owns Pergola Des Artistes, a French restaurant that caterers to theatergoers and tourists who had been noticeably absent since the Nov. 10 strike. “It was like this dark cloud over Broadway has been totally lifted,” Ponsolle said.

“I didn’t even realize the funk I was in. This feeling of elation came over me like I had been cured of cancer.”

Ponsolle said the strike cost him about $25,000 in revenue. If it had continued, he was contemplating laying people off.

“The next couple of weeks would have been very tough,” he said, with nobody eating the place’s winter dishes like cassoulet or bouillabaisse.

Joe Allen declined to say how much he lost. “I don’t want to talk money,” he said. “It’s gone forever. People talk about making it up in the spring. That ain’t going to happen.”

Allen said he was surprised that the strike had lasted so long.

“I said with great self-assurance that this can’t last long because there’s too much at stake. I was totally wrong about that – not the first time,” he said.

Restaurants caught in the crossfire between producers and stagehands felt helpless, he said: “It’s like being an innocent victim of a runaway train.”

One of the restaurants that suffered the most was Brazil Brazil. Manager Antonio Velarde had already scaled back employee hours. One more week and he would have laid off several. Velarde said the restaurant lost between $30,000 to $40,000.

Bryan Kalman, executive director of catering at Tavern on the Green, said the landmark restaurant in Central Park weathered the strike but was not been immune to it.

A holiday party for a Broadway show was nixed. “They unfortunately couldn’t commit … because of the strike,” he said. The restaurant was also expecting to host the party this week for David Ives’ Mark Twain farce “Is He Dead?” It, too, was canceled.

“The Little Mermaid” opening party will take place at the Roseland Ballroom but not on Dec. 6 as originally planned. Even though the Disney musical is being rescheduled, the decision to postpone was costly.

“That’s the only event that has affected us,” said Meredith Rothstein, Roseland’s director of special events. “I could have had something on that date. It hurts.”

With shows resuming, everybody is scrambling. The restaurants are placing food orders. Opening parties are being organized by such event planners as McNabb Roick Events (“The Little Mermaid”) and The Lawrence Company, which does the majority of Broadway opening nights.

“We are busy,” a happy Michael Lawrence said Thursday.

But just because the shows are running again doesn’t mean things will immediately return to normal. Ken Rosenblatt of Champion Parking Corp. said business fell off about 30 to 35 percent at his midtown garage that can hold nearly 350 vehicles.

“It will probably take a week to get back to normal,” Rosenblatt said Thursday.

AP-ES-11-29-07 1656EST