After months of delays, Evanston’s first blues club will open by the time Northwestern students return for Fall Quarter, the club’s owner said.

Originally slated to open in April, Bill’s Blues, 1029 Davis St., should start up by August 1, owner Bill Gilmore said. The club’s opening has been pushed back after logistical problems, mostly involved with construction and overhaul of the club’s existing space.

“What I didn’t really see coming turned out to be the problems,” Gilmore said. “Once I got beyond the Northwestern school year in June, I didn’t see the point in just killing ourselves trying to get open.”

Gilmore expects NU students to create most of the weekend business at his club. He said he hopes to get the club started in August to prepare for the influx of patrons in late September.

“It’s not uncommon for places to back their official grand opening up,” Gilmore said.

He pointed to an unexpected backlog of construction on the club as the cause for delay.

“It was mainly technical problems on our heating ventilation system,” Gilmore said.

The location, which most recently was a workshop for Turin Bicycle Evanston, needed a lot of repair to become a blues club, Gilmore said.

Gilmore, a veteran Chicago blues-club owner, said construction problems frequently delay new music venues.

The club will open in about four weeks, after the rest of the construction finishes and city inspectors examine Bill’s Blues to make sure it meets city building codes.

City officials have been monitoring the construction as it goes along, said Dick Peach, president of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce. Peach said he didn’t expect city inspectors to delay the project any further.

“The city is very anxious to have him open,” Peach said. “I don’t think they’ll be placing any roadblocks in the way.”

Peach said the blues club opens up new possibilities for Evanston businesses, particularly those in the neighborhood of the club.

“I think it adds a dimension further out on Davis Street,” Peach said, adding that he hoped the blues club would bring other businesses to Davis and the areas immediately surrounding it.

The club could also inspire more music venues to come to Evanston, since it asked for an exemption to the Evanston liquor law that requires businesses that serve liquor to sell food as well.

In response to Bill’s Blues’ request, the Evanston City Council approved a measure April 8 to make live-music venues exempt from this rule.

However, after a lengthy debate within the liquor board, Gilmore chose not to apply for the exemption, Peach said.

“Once the blues club applied for that liquor license it did open the possibilities for those other clubs,” Peach said.

The exemption requested by Bill’s Blues could lead to a boom in live music in the city, Peach said. Late-night food service would not be profitable for these venues, he said.

“Quite frankly, who’s serving food at 1 o’clock in the morning?” Peach said.

For now, however, Gilmore is focused on opening the club and booking initial acts. He said the construction troubles have made booking shows for early August difficult.

However, he said, the most important thing is to finally open his club’s door.

“As long as I get open, I don’t care,” Gilmore said.