Thai Bamboo restaurant owner Tom Burgess says construction will begin next month on a new South Hill site that’s just blocks away from one of its current restaurant.

The new 7,500-square-foot restaurant, to be erected at 2215 E. 29th, will replace the 2,500-square-foot restaurant at its longtime location at 2926 E. 29th, Burgess says.

The South Hill restaurant currently has 20 employees, and Burgess says he expects that number will reach 35 at the new location.

The restaurant will feature custom interior “sky” lighting, an enclosed patio, a larger banquet room than exists at the current restaurant, and a considerably larger parking lot for patrons, he says.

“We think this will be something the residents of the South Hill are really going to like,” says the 61-year-old Burgess.

Spokane Valley-based T.W. Clark Construction LLC is the general contractor, and Russell C. Page Architects PS, of Spokane, is the project architect.

The interior, Burgess says, will resemble that of the North Side restaurant at 5406 N. Division. However, the exterior will be more representative of the South Hill neighborhood in which the restaurant will operate.

“It won’t be the bright red exterior of the Division restaurant. There, you’re really having to compete for the attention of motorists,” he says. “That’s not the case on the South Hill.”

Burgess and his wife, Matavee Burgess, who was born and raised in Thailand, opened their first Thai Bamboo in 2001 at 12722 E. Sprague, in Spokane Valley. In addition to that location and the South Hill and North Side restaurants, the couple operates a fourth Thai Bamboo in Coeur d’Alene, at 2010 N. Fourth.

Burgess says he’d been traveling to Thailand since the early 1980s, more than 10 years before he met Matavee in Seattle.

“It was never colonized by the British or the French, so there’s no influence from Europe. It’s got beautiful beaches with blue, warm water. It’s safe, and the food is amazing,” he says.