REAL ESTATE : Wimberly Allison Begins Work on House of Blues Club

Newport Beach architects Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo have started work on House of the Blues, a restaurant and blues nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.

The club, expected to open late this year, is the brainchild of Isaac Tigrett, a Los Angeles financier who was co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe. Designed to look like a Mississippi Delta roadhouse of the early 1900s, with weathered cedar clapboard siding and a tin roof, the club will feature varieties of blues and is expected to have a Sunday gospel service.

Partners in the project include actors Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi, brother of the late John Belushi, who starred with Aykroyd in the TV comedy-inspired movie “The Blues Brothers.”

The first House of the Blues opened last year at Harvard Square in Massachusetts, and another is expected to open in New Orleans. Wimberly is not involved in those projects.

Wimberly Allison, an architectural firm specializing in resort and leisure projects, has been hit hard by the recession. It has reduced its staff from 171 employees in 1988 to only 41 by 1991. Now, with more than 60 employees, the firm says it is on the comeback trail, recently hiring 12 architects to handle increased business from both the House of the Blues project and new resort work overseas.