Even before MacKenzie River Pizza Co. has opened its first Spokane restaurant, the Montana-based chain says it now plans to open a second eatery here.

MacKenzie River Pizza has leased 5,860 square feet of space in the Cedar Canyon Village on the South Hill, where it plans to open in the fall, says Erica Coffman, spokeswoman for the restaurant's parent company, Whitefish, Mont.-based Glacier Restaurant Group.

The restaurant will occupy a former Hollywood Video space, next to the Albertsons Inc. supermarket at the southeast corner of 57th Avenue and Regal Street, Coffman says. The company expects to begin remodeling work there within a month, she says.

MacKenzie River Pizza plans to open its first Spokane restaurant in mid-June. The building that will house that restaurant currently is under construction at 9925 N. Nevada, on Spokane's North Side.

Lone Wolf Mt., of Stevensville, Mont., is the contractor on both the remodel project on the South Hill and the construction project on the North Side, and Jackola Engineering & Architecture PC, of Kalispell, Mont., designed them, Coffman says.

The restaurant company will hire about 70 employees for each restaurant, she says.

MacKenzie River's menu consists of gourmet pizza, hearty sandwiches, salads, pasta, and other entrees, Coffman says. The decor in the restaurant will incorporate a rustic Montana theme, with lodgepole-pine furniture and accents and displays of fly-fishing equipment, antique snowshoes and skis, and panoramic mountain photos, she says.

MacKenzie River Pizza currently operates 13 restaurants, including one in Coeur d'Alene that opened in 2009.

Glacier Restaurant Group, the parent company, also owns the Ciao Mambo chain of Italian restaurants, which opened an outlet in downtown Spokane earlier this year and one in Hayden, Idaho, in 2007.

Cory Barbieri, of Spokane-based Goodale & Barbieri Co., handled the Cedar Canyon Village lease.