What: Olive Garden Italian Restaurant

Where: Bend Center, 63459 N. U.S. Highway 97, Bend

Owner: Darden Restaurants Inc., Orlando, Fla.

General contractor: Haley Construction Inc., Daytona Beach, Fla.

Contact: 800-331-2729

Details: The first Olive Garden Italian Restaurant in Oregon east of the Cascades is under construction in the Bend Center mall near The Home Depot.

The roughly 7,500-square-foot bar and restaurant will accommodate approximately 250 customers when it opens in early 2010.

Construction began in July.

Modeled after a Tuscan farmhouse, the restaurant will have a stone exterior, vaulted ceilings with exposed wood beams and stone, and wood and terra cotta accents throughout, according to the company.

The restaurant offers lunch and dinner items, including a variety of pasta, seafood, salads, beef, pork and pizza.

Olive Garden is owned and operated as a division of Orlando, Fla.-based Darden Restaurants Inc. According to the company’s Web site, there are 691 Olive Gardens across the country, including Oregon locations in Portland, Salem, Clackamas, Gresham, Beaverton, Lake Oswego, Eugene and Medford.

The company’s Olive Garden division reported sales of $3.1 billion in fiscal year 2008 and average annual sales of $4.9 million per restaurant, according to the company.

— Andrew Moore, The Bulletin