Detroit's popular Kuzzo's Chicken & Waffles restaurant on Livernois will get a second, larger location in the greater downtown area in early 2020, the owner told Crain's this week.

Ronald Bartell said he's signed a five-year lease for a 4,000-square-foot location in a to-be-built mixed-use development called The Woodward @ Midtown, which has long been planned by Detroit-based developer Queen Lillian II LLC. The site is at Woodward Avenue at Stimson Street just south of Mack Avenue across from The Bonstelle Theatre.

Construction of the building, which will include ground-floor retail and several stories of residential units along Woodward Avenue, is expected to take 18 months after work begins this fall, Bartell said. His own restaurant build-out will take 60 days, which leads to an opening in early 2020, he said.

Bartell has not yet hired a restaurant designer, but said he plans to have a larger kitchen. That's a lesson from the first Kuzzo's, whose kitchen isn't large enough to handle food demand at times, he said.

"The biggest lesson I learned is always overbuild your kitchen," he said.

Bartell also said he plans to seek a liquor license for full bar service at the second Kuzzo's in order to capture pre- and post-game and event attendance from the nearby sports and entertainment venues on Woodward.

Bartell doesn't plan any food changes because Kuzzo's has proven to be a winning recipe.

"The menu is going to be the same," he said. A few less-popular items could be dropped, he added.

The new Kuzzo's is expected to seat up to 125. The current restaurant is 2,800 square feet and seats 80, he said.

Over the next several months, Bartell will work to finalize store design, identify management and staff hires, and begin the liquor license paperwork.

The Woodward @ Midtown has been in the works for years, long beset by use and financing snags. However, the Queen Lillian development group, run by Chris Jackson and Jim Jenkins, has entered advanced negotiations with Detroit-based The Platform LLC, run by Peter Cummings and Dietrich Knoer, to become an equity partner on the project. The Platform is involved in several developments and redevelopments along Grand Boulevard and in other Detroit neighborhoods.

Queen Lillian consists of Jackson, who is minority owner and a former staffer to former Detroit City Council President Gil Hill and former part owner of Greektown Casino-Hotel; and Jenkins, who is majority owner of the company and is president and CEO of Detroit-based Jenkins Construction Inc., which will be the construction manager on The Woodward @ Midtown.

Most recently, the state awarded the project $3.5 million in financing. At the time it was slated to have 104 apartment units with 15,000 square feet of retail space. Jackson said with The Platform's anticipated involvement, the project is now planned to have 134 apartments and a 150-space parking deck.

It was originally planned to be a 75,000-square-foot medical office building to complement the developers' Queen Lillian I medical office building, which was completed for $18.4 million a mile away. The development was reconfigured after the project couldn't get enough of its space preleased, preventing developers from securing a construction loan.

Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates is the architect.

Bartell opened the first Kuzzo's at 19345 Livernois Ave. in January 2015 as part of his investment in several properties along the Avenue of Fashion strip of Livernois Avenue that spans McNichols and Eight Mile roads in northwest Detroit. It has 35 employees and did $2.3 million in sales last year, and will do about that again this year, Bartell said. He added that he expects the new location to generate $3 million to $3.5 million in annual sales.

Bartell, 36, grew up in northwest Detroit and is a Renaissance High School graduate. He played college football as a cornerback at Central Michigan University and Howard University. The St. Louis Rams drafted him in the second round of the 2005 NFL Draft. He played nine years with the Rams, Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions before retiring in 2013. A broken neck cut short his 2011 season and ultimately hastened the end of his football career, but at one point he was valued so much by the Rams that they gave him a four-year, $25 million contract in 2008 to keep him from leaving in free agency.