It’s official. Zippy’s highly-praised giant burgers will be making the move to 9614 14th Ave s.w., described by owner Blaine Cook as right off Roxbury St., behind Bartell drugs and a few blocks north of Big Al Brewing.

“I guess you could call it a godsend if anything,” Cook said. “It worked out really, really well for us.”

Expect the transition to occur sometime mid-April as their lease at the current location ends on April 19, Cook said.

The new spot has been vacant for the past few years, most recently the Hudaa Halal Restaurant and prior to that the Cookbook Café. Cook said the prior owners must have just gotten up and left one day as the kitchen and eating area are nearly ready to roll.

“It’s huge,” Cook said of their new location. “We are just a little over 500 square feet (currently) and this place has just under 1600 square feet. It has seating capacity for 60 people and a much larger kitchen.”

“At our current location it’s really not that conducive for what we do and there is a lot of running around and a lot of bumping into people,” he added. “We kind of call it, ‘Kitchen Frogger.’”

With a new location comes the possibility of new directions for Zippy’s.

“We have the space and it’s kind of like the world is our oyster. You know, get in there, get everything rolling and we are up for trying anything.”

Cook said they will start serving beer (beyond the root variety), hand-cutting their own french fries, make popular special burgers traditionally offered for a limited time permanent staples on the menu and look into the possibility of serving breakfast on the weekends.

They will also start accepting credit and debit card payments (cash-only nowadays) and Cook said there are no plans to jack up the current prices.

Zippy’s Giant Burger theme will remain intact, Cook said. One wall will still be painted like a hamburger bun and the walls will continue to pay homage to the history of hamburgers – a cornucopia of memorabilia that will only expand. Cook said he has a few more boxes of burger artifacts that will be unveiled with the additional space.

Cook hopes moving into a larger space will squelch the common complaints about Zippy’s amidst the high praise for the quality burgers at a good price: no parking and occasional long waits.

As for parking, it should be easy to find spaces all around the 14th Ave location and although the made-to-order, char-broiled burgers will still take some time to craft, Cook believes the 60-person capacity restaurant will inspire customers to relax.

“I think we’ll get a little more respect because we’ll have more of a sit down environment and I think people will be a little more patient,” he said.

There was much speculation in the media and community about where Zippy’s would end up as it became clear to Cook and his wife Rahel that continuing on in the Highland Park location just wouldn’t work. The building had been foreclosed and Unibank, who took over the space, had proven difficult to work with. To read more on the backstory, please check out the Herald story, “What does the future hold for Zippy’s Giant Burgers?”

They were looking all around West Seattle, including the vacant Chuck and Sally’s Tavern on the corner of California Ave s.w. and s.w. Graham, then the White Center spot came out of nowhere.

Someone contacted them through their website and mentioned the building. They called the property manager last week and, “kinda made it happen really, really fast,” Cook said.

“We had to do what we can do,” he said. “If everything would have worked out we would have loved to have the Chuck and Sally space, but you know we couldn’t shut our business down in April and then be out of business … if we would have been lucky enough to get Chuck and Sally’s that place could have taken us 9 months to a year.”

Cook said they have heard comments that people are disappointed they are moving from one bad neighborhood to another, but he is not fazed.

“A lot of people still have a negative stigma about White Center, so we’ve coined the term SoRo, south of Roxbury, so we’ll see how that goes,” Cook said.

It will be bittersweet goodbye to, “that little teeny space” on the corner of s.w. Holden and 16th Ave s.w. where Zippy’s burgers have been flung since May of 2008, but Cook welcomes the change.

“People are sad that we’re going to leave,” Cook said of the locals who have grown accustomed to an epic next-door grease fix, “but I think they are also happy … that things worked out for us in the end.”

For more information on Zippy’s Giant Burgers, visit www.zippysgiantburgers.com.