Brothers Jimmy and David Frantze's long-awaited, reconstructed restaurant will have a new location when the company unlocks the doors to the digs at Kansas City's Plaza Vista building toward the end of the summer.
"We're coming back from the ashes," Jimmy Frantze told The Kansas City Star. "I'm ready to go to work. I miss the business, I miss the people. Ironic isn't the word for it. We have to come up with another word."
According to The Star, workers started construction on an office and hotel-type project in 2005, but business decreased 40 percent in 2008 due to blockades and wall-like structures set up outside of the restaurant.
This followed the injury of one of the restaurant's waitresses in 2006 as a result of construction workers splitting rock while digging the West Edge garage complex below the ground, resulting in her hospitalization, The Star reported.
All hope was not lost, however, despite the garage and its counterparts being destroyed to make way for other builders to construct the Plaza Vista.
But then, a natural gas explosion took the life of another JJ waitress on Feb. 19, 2013. Many other employees were injured by the blast, which also disfigured two adjacent structures. The restaurant was demolished after the explosion.
The president of the developer on the project VanTrust Real Estate LLC told The Star that Plaza Vista wasn't initially meant to be a restaurant when the attraction opened in November.
"There's a real synergy to the Plaza Vista property with a great mixture of dining, hospitality and premier office uses," David Harrison, president of VanTrust Real Estate LLC, developer of the Plaza Vista, in a statement.
Harrison told The Star he was thrilled that the brothers were working to open their restaurant again.
"On a personal note, after growing up with the Frantzes, I am ecstatic that Jimmy and the team selected Plaza Vista as the new home of JJ's restaurant. As a patron, I am equally excited to be able to dine at JJ's once again," Harrison said.
The brothers have focused efforts on plans for the restaurant and talks over many months.
