The Place 2 Be opening at Basketball Hall of Fame

The Place 2 Be, the Hartford-based all-day brunch-and-cocktail chain, will celebrate the grand opening on Wednesday of its first out-of-state location, at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield.

The restaurant, with decor that pokes fun at the Hall of Fame theme, will be open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week.

Gina Luari, who founded the first location of The Place 2 Be in Hartford in 2016, recently formed The Statement Group as a means of bringing the chain to other states.

Luari said she is scouting locations in Houston and Dallas. She also is looking at the Boston waterfront, but has slowed down her search for a place in Miami.

“Miami prices are out of control,” she said.

The Place 2 Be has locations on Franklin Avenue in Hartford, the site that launched the chain, and at Blue Back Square in West Hartford. The downtown Hartford location, in Constitution Plaza, has been closed since it was damaged by fire March 8. It will reopen in mid-june, she said.

Luari said Springfield would have opened sooner if not for the fire in Hartford. “We had already got the contractors, but they had to be pulled from the other projects to work on downtown,” she said. She said her soon-to-open location in New Haven will open later than planned because of the fire. It should open at the end of August, she said.

The fire also slowed the build-out on RAW, Luari’s seafood restaurant and bar being built at 280 Trumbull St. in Hartford. That development was partially financed with a $150,000 Hart Lift grant from the city, geared toward revitalizing vacant downtown properties. Luari said she is hoping for a mid-summer opening for RAW.

Luari said the fire was caused by someone smoking near a dumpster adjacent to the eatery.

Two other Hartford projects Luari is working on that were funded by $150,000 Hart Lift grants — Cantina, a Mexican restaurant at 900 Main St.; and Charred, a pizza place inside the old firehouse at 275 Pearl St. — are in the early stages and have no set opening dates yet.

The 6,000-square-foot Springfield location will be the biggest in the chain so far and will have four bars, an outdoor patio and a function room, which no other location has. Find them at theplace2bect.com.