The restaurant known for its Blizzards and soft-serve ice cream treats is coming soon to Richland’s growing Duportail Street area.

The owners of the local Dairy Queen franchise also plan to close their Columbia Center mall store at the end of the month as planning begins in earnest for the new one.

The new 2,600-square-foot DQ Grill & Chill restaurant will be located behind the Maverik gas station at 3520 Duportail St. in Richland. It could open by the year’s end.

“We’re excited about this location. We’ve been looking at getting something out there for some time,” said Bill Tierney, whose father Tom Tierney and uncle Kerry Tierney of Walla Walla own Stony Lake Enterprises.

The Tierney partners own seven Dairy Queen restaurants in the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla and in Yakima. They’ve been partners since 1980, said Bill Tierney.

The DQ Grill & Chill will be built on about three-quarters of an acre of land formerly owned by the Kennewick Irrigation District. It’ll feature outdoor patio seating and seating for 72 inside.

The closure of the mall Dairy Queen ends an era as it, along with Ivar’s, were the original food court vendors, operating since 1988, said Bill Tierney.

“We’ve kind of changed our business plan and are moving more into freestanding stores and that’s where our focus has been,” he said.

The new Richland restaurant will look similar to the DQ Grill & Chill restaurant on Burden Boulevard in Pasco that opened in 2012.

The Duportail corridor is “becoming a big shopping area. Weekends are really busy with folks from Prosser, Grandview and the Tri-Cities area. There’s lots of people who live out there and that’s a growing area. We looked at that and said it makes sense to be out there. Customers have been bugging us about it,” Bill Tierney said.

Zeigler Construction Co. of Pasco is the general contractor. Baker Boyer Bank is financing the project.