The Burger Bunker and Big Bang Pizza will soon be coming to downtown Great Falls.

The two restaurants will be moving into the old Umami space at the corner of 1st Avenue South and 5th Street.

Umami, His and Her Coins closing in downtown Great Falls

They’ll be co-located but will each have their own store front, said John Williams, owner of the two restaurants as well as JJ’s Bakery and Good Eats Catering.

The Burger Bunker is currently located in the city-owned Community Recreation Center, where Good Eats originally started 11 years ago. Big Bang Pizza is currently in the Columbus Center, both are on 2nd Avenue North.

“It’s gonna go nuts. We’ll have a lot higher foot traffic,” Williams said of the new downtown location. “There’s still a lot of people downtown and there’s going to be more soon. Everything is livening up down there.”

With large employers like the FCR call center opening downtown, Williams said downtown is continuing to improve and becoming a vibrant space.

There’s no date for the move yet, but Williams said they’ll be open in the new location by the end of September. Their lease at the Rec Center runs through the end of September and the city Park and Recreation department has already issued a request for proposals to fill the space.

Burger Bunker has operated in the Rec Center since August 2015 and Big Bang Pizza opened in October 2016.

Big Bang Pizza will make the move first and launch the new locations, Williams said, with Burger Bunker following. He said the burger joint will be moved over a Sunday, when it’s typically closed, so it will operate in the Rec Center on a Saturday and open in the new location on a Monday.

Williams said they’re leasing the downtown space and planning to start work in the building this week. There were kitchen fires at the location when Umami operated in the space and Williams said there’s a lot of work to be done to prepare for the move.

JJ’s is by far their strongest location, Williams said, so moving their other two restaurants is “bringing a lot of stuff that downtown doesn’t have.”

They’ll be doing pizza by the slice and adding some mashups like a new pizza burger with pizza as the bun and a burger in the middle.

The menus will be the same, plus some new items and they’ll “tinker around” with some of their offerings, Williams said.

“A lot of people aren’t looking to spend $10 on lunch anymore and they don’t have an hour to do it,” he said, so they’ll be offering $1 pizza slices and people can be in and out the door with pizza, a burger, or both.