Jimmy Frantze unveils plans for a new JJ’s Restaurant on the Plaza

JJ’s Restaurant is coming back.

Owner Jimmy Frantze announced last week that he had signed a lease for a lobby-level space — more than 3,800 square feet — in the Plaza Vista Building, on the west edge of the Country Club Plaza, at 900 West 48th Place. The new JJ’s is slated to open this summer.

It’s big restaurant news. The original JJ’s at 910 West 48th Street was destroyed after an explosion on February 19, 2013. The blast injured several people and killed popular server Megan Cramer.

At the time, a very shaken Frantze wasn’t sure that he wanted to reopen the 28-year-old bistro. He knew he didn’t want to rebuild on the ruins of the former restaurant. He and his brother still own the property on 48th Street, but Frantze says he currently has no plans for it: “A developer will want it in a few years, I imagine,” Frantze says. “I’ll just sit on it for a while.”

After looking at several existing restaurant properties, Frantze was shown an empty retail space in the West Plaza office tower that boasts the Polsinelli law firm as a major tenant.

Frantze loved the sunny space, which has a 1,600-square-foot patio “with a great view of the cityscape,” he says.

The new JJ’s will be the second restaurant in the office tower; Colorado-based Big Red F Restaurant Group is opening a Jax Fish House on the lower level of the building.

When the restaurant opens, Frantze says he’ll return with the menu from the original JJ’s. The new restaurant will serve lunch and dinner.

“But we’ll have five or six nightly specials so our chefs can express their creativity,” Frantze says. “And we may bring back some of our dishes from the Frondizi’s menu.”

Even though 7,200 bottles of wine were lost in the explosion, Frantze says he has more than 6,000 bottles that were stored in a different location.

To help inventory the wines and start the process of creating a new restaurant (which will be designed by 360 Architecture), Frantze has hired his former managers, Matt Nichols and Joe Avelutto Jr.

“I’m hoping that at least 90 percent of our former staff will rejoin us at the new venue,” Frantze says.

Also in the fold is former JJ’s bar manager Josh Lehne, who has been working as a bartender at Capital Grille for most of the past 14 months.

Lehne was not working at JJ’s the night of the explosion, but his fiancée, Lindsay Simmons, a bartender, was on duty and did get injured. Lehne has been involved in the planning for the new JJ’s.

“Jimmy Frantze has always been great about having his employees provide input,” Lehne says.

Avelutto, who has spent the past 14 months working as a private chef and waiting tables at Louie’s Wine Dive in Waldo, is eager to return to work for Frantze.

“There’s a lot of fine-tuning to do as far as the plans go, but it’s going to be a beautiful restaurant,” Avelutto says. “The bar will be bigger than the original JJ’s but still retain that sense of intimacy.”

No space will ever be able to match the distinctive atmosphere of the dark, cozy, original JJ’s, but Frantze plans to bring new paintings by local artist Mike Savage — a signature of the former venue — into the new dining room.

“Over 30 of our Mike Savage paintings were destroyed in the explosion,” Frantze says.

A mural that Savage had created on one of the wooden panels blocking the West Edge construction site across the street will also be incorporated into the new restaurant.

“I’m very, very excited about this project,” Frantze says. “We’ve been working on it for four months.”

Frantze also plans to honor Cramer’s memory in the new dining room.

“We haven’t decided how to best memorialize Megan,” Frantze says. “It may be a plaque. It may be something else. But she will be honored. Megan was only with us for one year and four months, but she instantly became part of our restaurant family.”