West Side restaurant operator Hop Jacks LLC plans to open its first Eastern Washington restaurant on Spokane's North Side this October.

To be located just north of a MacKenzie River Pizza Co. outlet in a shopping center anchored by a WinCo Foods Inc. supermarket, the restaurant will be the Bonney Lake, Wash.-based company's sixth eatery overall, says Hop Jacks co-owner Mark Eggen.

Spokane Pavilion LLC, which owns the shopping center, is scheduled to build a stand-alone, 4,500-square-foot restaurant building at 9265 N. Nevada for the new Hop Jacks. Bill Sandre, a Phoenix-based project manager for Kornwasser Shopping Center Properties LLC, which manages and is the parent company of Spokane Pavilion LLC, says that once the company has a building permit for the project, it will seek contractor bids.

As the tenant, Hop Jacks plans to finish the restaurant's interior construction by October. For that work, Eggen says the company will hire D L Hermann Contracting Inc. of Lakewood, Wash. Architect Scott Olson, with Tacoma-based firm G|O, is involved in the project's design.

Eggen, who owns Hop Jacks with business partner Greg Troger, says the interior construction, furnishings, and equipment installation are expected to have a total cost of about $800,000. The city has estimated the value of constructing the building's shell at $611,000, putting the overall project cost at about $1.4 million.

Hop Jacks is a casual dining restaurant offering hamburgers, salads, and pasta dishes among other menu items, and markets itself as having unusual alcohol and nonalcoholic drinks, Eggen says. Hop Jacks opened its first restaurant in 2009 in Bonney Lake, 16 miles east of Tacoma. It opened outlets in Lacey, Wash., in 2010 and in Silverdale, Wash., in January.

The business plans to open a fourth Hop Jacks in Issaquah, Wash., this month, and a fifth restaurant in Maple Valley, Wash., this summer.

Eggen says Hop Jacks is targeting a late October opening for the Spokane outlet, after hiring between 70 and 80 mostly part-time employees. He adds that the restaurant will have 170 seats and a patio that can seat an additional 30 customers.

Eggen says his background includes working 20 years for the Red Robin Gourmet Burgers & Spirits Emporium restaurant chain as a vice president of operations. He says Hop Jacks seeks to return to the feel of a popular neighborhood eatery, moving away from a large retail mall setting.

"What we're doing with our brand is probably similar to what those of us who were around in the late '80s and '90s remember, returning to what Red Robin was then with the same sophisticated burgers but we've enhanced the beer selections and both the adult and non-adult beverages."

"We think Spokane is a perfect place," he adds. "Our objective is to go to neighborhoods with a slightly smaller footprint and become a gathering place for those neighborhoods."