A NEW restaurant is set to open its doors to the public in November once the renovation of a former Ipswich dance hall is completed.

A NEW restaurant is set to open its doors to the public in November once the renovation of a former Ipswich dance hall is completed.

Around 50 jobs will be created once Ken Ambler, who established Mortimer's Seafood Restaurant before it was absorbed into a national chain, finishes transforming the former Arlington dance hall on Museum Street into an eatery, a coffee house and a sandwich shop.

The venture was given the go-ahead by town planners back in March.

Renovation of the Grade II listed building is currently under way and the new restaurant is due to open in mid November.

Mr Ambler, a chef who trained in Toulouse, is to launch the venue as a French brassiere, specialising in Suffolk meat in the 600 square metre former ballroom.

It will be called Arlingtons.

Mr Ambler set up Mortimer's - named after little-known eighteenth century painter Thomas Mortimer - in Duke Street in 2002 after buying the former Eastern Electricity substation two years earlier.

He had it decommissioned and ran it until 2005, when he sold a 21-year-lease there to the Loch Fyne chain for £500,000.

Mr Ambler, and his wife, Elizabeth have also previously run a restaurant on the town's waterfront, Mortimer's on the Quay, before they moved it to Duke Street, and another in Bury St Edmunds, which has been sold.

Arlingtons was previously home to Ipswich School of Dancing.

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