Wyman Stacey is getting close to rebuilding the Rocky Flats Lounge, a bar housed in the former payroll building of the Rocky Flats Plant and known for its Friday fish fries and Green Bay Packers games.

“I got the liquor license pretty much taken care of today,” Stacey said Friday. “I wanted to get that done before I decided on whether to rebuild.”

Last July, a fire swept through the lounge, which is located on Colo. 93 between Boulder and Golden and across the street from what was once the Rocky Flats Plant, a nuclear weapons production facility.

It was turned into a bar in about 1960 and Stacey, who already worked there, bought it in 1983.

Stacey said that investigators looked for a couple months but could never nail down the cause of the fire, but they know it started in the kitchen before charring most of the interior.

Now that the insurance part of the ordeal is done, Stacey and his wife Pat are meeting with the contractor and landowners on Sunday to began plans for rebuilding. If all goes according to plan, he hopes to reopen in a few months.

“This has been going on for 11 months,” he said. “I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, but you know how it is these days with anything.”

Westminster resident Ruth King has been coming to the lounge for about 30 years. Her father worked at the nuclear weapons plant and frequented the bar, so it gathered her curiosity. She stopped by one day and was hooked.

“It was the only bar my father ever got into a fight at,” she joked. “I’m also a Packers fan.”

Stacey said he started showing Packers games because the original owner was from Wisconsin fan. After the bar caught fire, the team sent a letter expressing its condolences along with some Packers swag.

“It was nice to get something from the Packers’ organization,” he said.

The Packers notwithstanding, the lounge is perhaps best known for its Friday fish fries with Mississippi catfish and perch along with Lake Superior walleye, which Stacey said is a big hit among the Midwestern crowd.

“The fish fries are excellent,” Stan Babuszczak, a longtime patron and Wyman’s brother in law, said. “If you love walleye or catfish and perch. It’s the best. You can’t get it better anywhere else.”

The lounge is known as a hangout for bikers riding through the area, but Stacey and his patrons say it’s also popular with skiers, cyclists and people from Boulder, Coal Creek Canyon and Arvada, to name a few communities.

“It’s just so friendly,” Babuszczak said. “The whole thing is like what Boulder used to be to me.”

Although he is excited at the prospect of reopening his lounge, Stacey is a little mad. Last month, someone took the big yellow sign that advertises the lounge’s “Wisconsin Style Fri Nite Fish Fry” and “All Packer Games.”

“If anyone sees my sign, we would like to have it back,” he said.

The Lounge’s Facebook page was diplomatic but serious in tone:

“To whoever took it, we understand people make bad decisions,” the post reads. “It’s not too late to do right. Return it immediately and there won’t be any repercussions. If not, and if we find you, well…”

John Bear: 303-473-1355, bearj@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/jonbearwithme