Two decades after declaring bankruptcy, The Ground Round is returning to Mass.

The original Shrewsbury Ground Round restaurant, pictured around 1982 or 1983. The old location, now home to a Walgreens, is just a few minutes away on Route 9 from the new restaurant, slated to open next year.Anthony Sammarco

A beloved family-style restaurant is set to return to Massachusetts, nearly two decades after the chain went bankrupt and disappeared from New England virtually overnight.

A Shrewsbury couple is poised to open a new Ground Round location in their town early next year, co-owner Joseph Shea said. Shea and his wife Nachi bought the intellectual property of the nearly moribund brand last year and have been working to restore the onetime casual dining destination to its former acclaim.

The new restaurant will take the place of Bauhinia, an Asian restaurant on Grafton Street that closed earlier this month. Contractors are busily refurbishing the space to fit a new, modernized aesthetic that still harkens back to the Ground Round of olde, Shea said.

“We’re kind of in and out, running around with our heads cut off,” Shea said.

Known for its free popcorn and discarded peanut shells scattered on the floor, The Ground Round thrived for decades in the Northeast before a series of ownership debacles, amid heightened competition from national chains, forced the company into bankruptcy in the early 2000s.

Joseph Shea, who also owns a water filtration company based in Shrewsbury, said nostalgia was a major factor in deciding to open a Ground Round, which people in Central Massachusetts have missed “for as long as I can remember.”

Shea, 37, fondly recalls going to The Ground Round in high school with his sports teammates, relaxing and eating their fill after games and practices.

“It was this group gathering that just extended the fun,” he said. “That’s something I’ll always remember.”

When the new location is complete, it will seek to be a destination for casual dining and family nights out, Shea said.

“Ultimately, what we’re looking to create is that warm, inviting place that everyone felt like they could go to with their families, with their kids, with co-workers after work,” he said. “The all-around place that [when you ask], ‘Where do we want to go?’ it’s not even a question.”

Workers are remodeling a former Asian restaurant in Shrewsbury into a new Ground Round location. The building's exterior has already been repainted into The Ground Round's classic red-green color scheme.Joseph Shea

The Ground Round was founded in 1969, when Howard Johnson’s, the Quincy-based hotel-and-restaurant empire, spun off its suburban locations. The new brand established itself as a popular, inexpensive hangout for young adults — though an incident at a Ground Round in Braintree in 1983 led to the outlawing of “happy hours” in Massachusetts — and later as a relaxed, family-style restaurant.

“It was something that was less formal, less cookie-cutter,” said Anthony Sammarco, a Massachusetts historian who wrote a book chronicling the rise and fall of Howard Johnson’s. “And it was also something that, in a lot of ways, appealed to what at that time was the beginning of what might have been called the young professional. Good food and a nice place to go when you only had $10 to spend.”

At its peak, the Massachusetts-based company operated more than 200 restaurants across the country. But over the years, it lost ground to national casual dining chains like Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s that were seen as more upscale and modern, Sammarco said.

“The Ground Round had plywood paneling, these rustic-type tables and chairs, things of that sort,” he said. “I think people’s tastes changed. Not the fact that they didn’t like a good cheeseburger, a hamburger, french fries. But I think The Ground Round had kind of dated itself.”

The company struggled with worsening debt and a revolving door of ownership groups before abruptly filing for bankruptcy in 2004; dozens of restaurants shut down in the middle of the dinner rush, and some diners were even sent home with half-eaten meals in takeout containers.

After the bankruptcy, the Ground Round brand was acquired by a group of several franchise owners, but the remaining locations eventually closed one by one. The last restaurant in the Northeast, in Bangor, Maine, closed earlier this year. Today, there are only four operational Ground Round franchises: three in North Dakota and one in Ohio.

Shea said he’s still figuring out which features of the old Ground Round to bring back. In terms of classic menu items, there are plans to bring back the blackened chicken alfredo and cinnamon dippers. The famous “Pay What You Weigh” promotion — where young children were able to pay low prices for grilled cheeses and hot dogs — is also expected to return “in some capacity,” though it will probably be changed to be “mindful of today’s landscape,” Shea said.

And while the new location won’t have peanut shells strewn all over the floor due to allergy concerns, there will still be plenty of popcorn, just like the old days.

“Being hyper-focused on one location, we’re allowed to make sure we get it right,” Shea said. “We don’t have to look at this [on a] huge scale and try to duplicate it hundreds of times over.”

Diners elsewhere in Massachusetts who are hankering for The Ground Round’s classic burgers and baby back ribs will have to make the trek to Shrewsbury; there are no plans to expand the chain elsewhere, at least for the time being, Shea said.

“Being so hands-on, being local, we’re going to put the right people in place,” he said. “We’re going to make sure that everything is as perfect as can be.”