AMHERST —Two Amherst restaurants that closed this fall will reopen with new names and under new ownership in the coming weeks, while a new nightclub is also coming to downtown.

The Board of Licence Commissioners is holding virtual hearings Dec. 28 at 5:30 p.m. on liquor license transfers for 40 University Drive and 104 North Pleasant St. The transfer requests come from Paul Tupa, of Pembroke, who will manage both properties. Tupa and Peter Lucido, of Duxbury, co-own several restaurants in Plymouth.

The former Savannas on University Drive will become the Amherst Public House, while what had been Amherst Burger Co. on North Pleasant Street will become the Uptown Tap and Grille.

Lucido and Tupa both earned restaurant and hospitality management degrees at the University of Massachusetts in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, earlier this month the Board of License Commissioners approved a license for Gabe’s Underground at 37-41 Boltwood Walk, the space most recently occupied by Hazel’s Blue Lagoon.

“We’re looking to open a nightclub, restaurant, bar location on Boltwood Walk,” said Krause, who, with Andrea Hunter, already runs Gabe’s 252 in Westfield, which has a similar concept.

Open from 2 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily, Krause said he expects the main crowd to be college students and locals.

The nightclub will have billiards, arcade games, televisions showing sports, as well as a dance floor.

“My vision was to really create something that would keep people there,” Krause said.

Hunter explained that the menu will be simple, with hamburgers, chicken wings, fried food and appetizers.

Commission member Dillon Maxfield observed that Amherst has lacked a downtown pool hall since the closing of High Horse Brewery and Bistro, which shut down prior to the pandemic and never reopened.

“It’s a very serious focus,” Hunter said of the pool tables. Based on what they see at the Westfield location, pool will be popular. “The college kids love it, it’s used all the time.”

Krause assured the commissioners that the business will use scanners to examine IDs, and will have a zero tolerance policy, including for drugs and fights.

“I have very low patience for people who want to cause a problem,” Krause said.

Reese Deshaies, the manager for the establishment, said that if someone has exceeded their limits on drinking, they are asked to leave the bar. All employees will also be TIPS certified to identify people who need to be cut off from service. “We are very strict in the order we go about that,” Deshaies said.

The new restaurants and nightclub come following the recent opening of restaurants D.P. Dough and Lau Hu Tong and the anticipated opening of the Spoke Live, another nightclub being planned for the northern end of downtown.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.