Natalie's will take over former King Avenue 5 bar, where a restaurant and bar area will be separate from the music hall.

Natalie's Coal-Fired Pizza and Live Music will open its second location this summer in the space that was sports bar King Avenue 5 near Grandview Heights.

"We've been working on this since last November and have come to a deal," said Charlie Jackson, who has run the Worthington strip-center pizza and music destination with daughter Natalie since August 2012.

King Avenue 5 closed in December after a 13-year run.

Natalie's Worthington location will continue to operate — including music acts — after the second location opens, Jackson said.

Get the news delivered to your inbox: Sign up for our morning and afternoon newsletters

The new location — which might get a name other than Natalie's — won't create problems in booking acts at the original site, he said.

"I said to Natalie a few years ago that I could easily book another venue," Jackson said. "We have more acts than we can handle now, even with shows six nights a week."

The niche that Natalie's occupies will ensure that there will be no difficulty in getting "great acts" in the second venue, said Alec Wightman, a Columbus lawyer and former chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame board.

"I absolutely think there are enough acts to go around," said Wightman, who runs Zeppelin Productions, which has booked acts at Natalie's. "This will give an opportunity to bring in acts a little bit different than you see at Natalie's right now, a little-bigger-name artists at a reasonable price.

"Charlie is going to do this in a world-class way," Wightman said. "My hope is before long it will be seen as one of the finest 150-seat venues in the country. I think it's going to be fabulous — and fill a nice niche in the market, a true listening-room environment for singer-songwriters."

The Worthington venue added a "speakeasy" in the basement in 2017. But even that added area can't match the new space at 945 King Ave. Although the new location is split into two rooms, the total area — approximately 9,000 square feet — is significantly larger than the 2,400 square feet at 5601 N. High St. in Worthington.

"The key difference is we're going to be able to have a separate bar and restaurant environment in the new location, and a separate music hall," said Jackson, who once owned the long-departed Aardvark Video store in the Short North.

"This way, the restaurant can have a life of its own," Jackson said. "We'll have an expanded menu because we'll have a larger kitchen. It's about three times the size of the Worthington kitchen. We're looking forward to letting our chef cut loose and do some creative things. It's not just a pizza place; we'll have a lot more on our menu."

The new music-hall area has a bar and will offer food, too, in the cabaret-style seating.

"We do want to keep the intimacy of the music experience," Jackson said. "You get too far removed, and you lose that. We know that's always been part of our appeal. But because the new place has a larger stage, we will be able to attract some acts we're currently too small to get. And for shows like the gospel series we have once a week, the bigger stage will really be an enhancement.

"Having separate restaurant and music areas will also allow us to have earlier show times," Jackson said. The Grandview-area location "will do music as often as we have great acts that are available to us. We may have other events in there, too."

tferan@dispatch.com

@timferan