There has been much speculation about 48 Main street in Vineyard Haven ever since July 4, 2008, when fire destroyed Café Moxie and badly damaged the Bunch of Grapes bookstore. With the rubble atCafé Moxie knocked down shortly after the fire, an empty lot sat in the heart of downtown Vineyard Haven.

Now Michael Ryan, the owner of Island Woodworks and a partner of former Moxie owner Paul Currier, plans to re-open the cafe. Mr. Ryan bought the restaurant and the land it sits on from Mr. Currier last November. And as anyone who passes by can see, the building is up, though there’s nothing inside but workmen’s tools. Mr. Ryan said last week that the plumbing was being installed.

“We’re trying to make the outside as beautiful as possible,” he said. Mr. Ryan has hired Willie Wannamaker as the new chef. Mr. Wannamaker previously worked as a private chef. The maître d’ will be Alishka, who worked in that position in the past. Mr. Ryan also plans to apply for a license to serve beer and wine this time around.

In rebuilding Café Moxie, he said he encountered some regulations that did not apply to the original building. To comply with the fire code, the new building is now offset from the Bunch of Grapes; the two buildings used to share a wall. The building was also built with fire retardant materials.

Mr. Ryan has put the kitchen in the basement, giving chefs more room. “Because we had to make the building narrower, the kitchen is much more extensive,” he said. At 48 seats, the table space is the same, but the restaurant will now be fully accessible for people with handicaps. “The layout is going to be better,” Mr. Ryan said.

He has built two apartments above the restaurant and intends to rent them to year-round, Island residents. Construction stopped last year when the roof got too close to the primary electrical wire that was hanging above it. Mr. Ryan worked with NStar to have the wires moved and they’re now underground, but the delay lasted six months. The harsh weather this winter also slowed down construction.

The new building comes out to the property line, so the benches that used to sit out front are gone.

The main question, of course, is when will Moxie be open?

There is no firm date yet, but Mr. Ryan said he is hoping to open sometime this summer. “We’re trying. It depends upon the bank. It depends upon the weather. There are a lot of variables,” he said.

Soon enough, predicted Tisbury building inspector Ken Barwick. “People will be going to dinner and recommending it to their friends and there will probably be a lot of people going in there and trying it out just for curiosity’s sake,” he said.

“It would be so wonderful. I think it’s very, very important to us as a town to have a restaurant there. An excellent restaurant, as it’s always been,” said Emily Bramhall, the owner of Bramhall & Dunn.

“It’s very challenging, it’s added another challenge, doing business in Vineyard Haven with that being empty for so long,” she said.