[media-credit name=’SUNDEEP MALLADI/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]After more than a year in its current location at 115 State St., Ian's Pizza will expand its restaurant and relocate its delivery base to accommodate increased customer traffic.

Currently, the State Street location only has space to seat six people. Ian's Pizza office manager Staci Fritz said the demand for seating has always been a problem, since the location receives a large rush of business people who want to get out of the office for lunch.

"We've experienced great success at this site since we opened in July of 2005, but we've been hampered by a lack of space," founder Ian Gurfield said. "This expansion will allow us to continue to grow and add to our menu."

Fritz said the store would be taking over both 111 and 113 State St., which have both been vacant for several months. Ian's was not necessarily planning on expanding, but Fritz said the opportunity arose at a good time and they took it.

"We just got really lucky that the space was made available, and that it was space we could really use," Fritz added. "We're doing a lot of expansion in the kitchen, and a new area dedicated to pizza delivery."

But Fritz said there was a lot of "passionate debate" about moving the central delivery hub of Ian's to the State Street location, since it is farther from campus. The biggest problem at the Frances Street location, she added, is a lack of kitchen space when the restaurant gets extremely busy at night.

Since there is really no space where the more popular Frances Street location can expand to, Fritz said expansion of the State Street branch is the only logical option. Yet in the end, she added, the switch will probably only add on to delivery time by a few minutes.

"Once we're out the door from Frances, we might have been able to get [to a customer] more quickly," Fritz admitted. "But having it not be so crazy busy on State, we will be able to get pizzas out there faster."

The additional 2,000 square feet of space will also allow the State Street Ian's to offer more special and daily pizzas and, in turn, more closely resemble the Frances Street branch. Fritz also said in the future, Ian's might look into opening another supplemental business. But for now, she added, the expansion is more than enough work.

Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said in terms of aesthetics, the storefronts on the 100 block of State Street would look much nicer with the Ian's expansion. He said the previous adjacent property, the State Street Arcade porn store, was not permitted by city ordinances to have real windows.

Another large pizza place on State Street is certainly not necessary, Verveer added, but it is "amazing" Ian's Pizza is able to do such good business in two locations.

"I would certainly prefer to have Ian's in the location than continue to have that very visible store front vacant like it has been for several months now," he said. "I think highly of Ian; he runs a good operation."