For those UA students thirstily awaiting Gentle Ben's return, the wait just got shorter.

Owner Dennis Arnold is opening Benito's, a subsidiary outlet, in Kippy's old location at 831 N. Park Ave. He said he expects to be back in business in about 10 days.

Last month, the Marshall Foundation said they closed Kippy's doors because owner Sharon Hines fell behind in her rent payments and her right to occupy that space had been terminated. Hines would not comment yesterday on the situation.

Arnold said the Marshall Foundation came to him with the offer of opening the secondary location, and he said he could not pass it up. It gives him the chance, he said, to put his employees back to work and to get his business running again.

"I had a lot of guys who wanted to get back to work," he said.

In the year Gentle Ben's has been closed, Arnold said he has paid between $5,000 and $10,000 in renewal fees to keep his liquor licenses current.

Benito's will offer Mexican food and rotisserie oven-baked chicken, but no burgers. He said he will leave that option for the new Ben's.

Gentle Ben's customers will still have to wait until mid-April, however, for the microbrewery to start producing its own lager.

The new Ben's is being constructed over the site of the old First National bank building at North Tyndall Avenue and East University Boulevard.

Arnold said they have been selectively demolishing the old building to use existing pieces of the structure within Gentle Ben's new design. Four red brick walls leftover from the old building and pieces of oak, wood paneling and the bar removed from the o ld Ben's will be incorporated into the new building.

"This place is going to be very interesting," Arnold said.

The new Ben's will occupy roughly 10,000 square feet - double the size of the old Ben's - with the bar separate from the restaurant.

Arnold said that, before, the two entities always clashed.

Now, he said, he has made the restaurant its own separate unit downstairs, beefed up the acoustic and thermal insulation in the floors and walls and added a separate elevator and stairs to access the bar upstairs.

Ben's capacity to brew its own beer will nearly triple, Arnold said, with almost 10,000 kegs produced per year. When the brewery is back to full operation, he said, Ben's will be shipping beer to the Benito's location.

This will become "somewhat of a pain," Arnold said, because by law to sell beer out of the subsidiary outlet, the brew must be picked up by a wholesaler, delivered to a warehouse to sit overnight and then be delivered to Benito's.

Arnold said he is looking to bottle his own brew in 22 ounce containers and retail it around town.

Mort Edberg, whose store, Landmark Clothing and Shoes, sits across University Boulevard from the new Gentle Ben's, said he is happy to see construction begin on the local brewery and bar.

"Between the hotel and Ben's and the right stores along (University Boulevard), I think this will be a great place for the kids to shop," he said. "They're working up a storm."

Edberg said when Ben's reopens in April and the hotel is completed in September, he feels businesses in the university area should rebound from this past year's construction slump.