Jimmy Hula's is out, The Garage is in

David Blair likes to think of The Garage Eatery & Pub, the restaurant he’s building in a 1950s-era gas station, as a gastro-pubby restaurant.

The Garage, at the corner of East University Boulevard and North Fourth Avenue, replaces Blair’s initial plans for the 2,000-square-foot building, which was to bring in a franchise of Florida-based Jimmy Hula’s taco and burger shack. (They are hiring now for all positions.)

Blair and his partner in that deal parted company, prompting Blair to hire a consultant and rethink his restaurant ambitions for the former gas station.

The Garage concept — burgers, seven or eight regional and local craft brews on tap, salads and sandwiches — fits the space, which was home from the 1950s to ’70s to the Fourth Avenue Tire and Service Station.

Blair leased the corner building more than a year ago and started the initial interior demolition work in July.

The back bay — which was added to the garage in the 1970s — was converted into a small kitchen and the concrete floors were stripped and finished . Most of the space is devoted to the dining room, which can seat about 50. An outside patio can seat another 20.

With the exception of some landscaping, the building’s exterior will remain largely as is, with visible rust on the metal eaves and the paint stripped away to reveal the original grayish brick walls. Glass garage doors will replace the old metal ones.

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Lunch service will be at the counter; diners place an order and pay, then pick up their food at the counter. Dinner will have table service.

On Thursday afternoon, as a crew of workers busied themselves unloading and installing kitchen equipment and working on the building’s exterior, a couple from the neighborhood popped into The Garage.

Blair invited them in and ticked off the building’s history, whose last chapter ended with the closing in 2009 of the Fourth Avenue Service Station.

The couple was among a handful of folks poking their heads in on the work in the past couple weeks.

“It’s a proud thing to do something on a very public corner,” said Blair, who envisions The Garage being a place where neighbors will come for a quick lunch, a family dinner or a beer with buddies.

“When we think of Fourth Avenue, the south end is for the college kids and the north side is for the neighborhoods,” he said.