GRAND FORKS — Two new restaurants may be coming to downtown Grand Forks, with proposed plans including an outdoor patio, an arcade, cornhole courts and plenty of dining space.
Fenders Family Entertainment Center and Earl’s Pizza would move into open commercial space in the Franklin on Fourth building, leasing the space from the property owners. The two restaurants will be operating as separate businesses but will be designed to complement each others’ spaces.
The restaurants are being developed by Franklin Marketplace LLC, made up of several local entrepreneurs and hospitality professionals.
“Our focus is to bring families to a destination downtown,” said Landon Bahl, one of the partners with Franklin Marketplace. “Obviously bars and restaurants, there’s plenty of them downtown, but there’s not many places that are truly kid-friendly.”
The 15,696-square-foot space on the ground floor would include a full-service bar, a video wall for sports coverage and an outdoor patio and seasonal event spaces. Earl’s Pizza space would have its own dining space where it could serve pizza and gelato, and customers would be able to enjoy pizza throughout the Fenders entertainment center as well.
Franklin on Fourth, completed in 2024, already houses the Avant Salon and Spa, Halberstadt’s Men’s Clothing, ICON Architects, Core Collective Fitness Studio and an Oxford Realty boutique office, alongside its apartment units.
Bahl said there’s been a lot of interest in the project, leading to involvement from several local business people, including those who previously may have had little interest in the hospitality sector.
“At the end of the day, once all the ownership is tied up, I would imagine we’ll have well over 10 different owners — local owners — within this project, and I think that speaks for itself,” he said.
The space would also feature several game attractions like an arcade, cornhole boards, dart board lanes and shuffleboard areas. Bahl said part of the goal of the project is to activate the paved alleyway of the building by adding an entrance to the restaurants there.
The project is estimated to cost $4 million, and Franklin Marketplace is applying for a lease/leaseholder improvement incentive through Grand Forks’ Renaissance Zone program, a state program that provides local and state tax incentives for property development and/or improvement in certain areas of a city.
The Grand Forks City Council heard details about the proposed restaurant space during its Committee of the Whole work session on Monday.
“I think a lot of people understand the importance of a great downtown community — downtown of any city — and if you have a great downtown, it usually means your city is doing pretty cool stuff,” Bahl said. “We’ve been punching above our weight for a long time with how great our downtown was, and being able to bring a restaurant downtown that is going to bring families to experience what we have is, I think, icing on the cake.”
Jordan Rusche is the Herald’s government reporter. Email her at jrusche@gfherald.com.
A proposed floor plan for Fenders and Earl’s Pizza in Franklin on Fourth.
A rendering of the proposed Earl’s Pizza dining space in Franklin on Fourth.
A rendering of the proposed video display for Fenders in Franklin on Fourth.
A rendering of the cornhole area in Fenders in Franklin on Fourth.
Jordan Rusche is the government reporter for the Grand Forks Herald.
Dining and Cooking