The flagship Iron Hill Brewery is being turned into a steakhouse by a local restaurant group

The original Iron Hill Brewery is being transformed into an upscale steakhouse fit for a college town.

The new concept, Rockwell’s On Main, is set to open this summer in the Iron Hill shell near the University of Delaware in Newark, said restaurateur Gianmarco Martuscelli.

He and his wife, Gilda, of Martuscelli Restaurant Group, also own Klondike Kate’s, a popular bar-restaurant across the street; La Casa Pasta, an Italian spot a few miles away; and the Chesapeake Inn, a waterfront mainstay in Chesapeake City, Md.

As natives of the area, “we always wanted to do a steakhouse in Newark,” said Gianmarco Martuscelli, who plans to spend about $1 million to “give the place a nice fresh look.”

The Newark Iron Hill closed in September, a few weeks before the regional brewery chain filed for liquidation bankruptcy. The shutdown left the Philadelphia region with more than a dozen vacant brewpubs, often in prime locations in the suburbs.

In recent months, a new ownership group announced they were resurrecting five Iron Hills, including the Center City location that reopened last month.

» READ MORE: Iron Hill Brewery’s new owners want to bring regulars back with free beer and other perks

The Wilmington brewery is among those being revived under new owners.

A reopening of the 10,000-square-foot riverfront Iron Hill is planned for mid-May, hopefully on Mother’s Day weekend, spokesperson Paul Furiga said Friday. The plan is pending permit approvals.

The Huntingdon Valley, Lancaster, and Hershey locations are also set to reopen sometime this summer.

Gianmarco Martuscelli said his family were patrons of Iron Hill for years, and loved the brewpub concept.

After Iron Hill closed and its lease became available, they jumped at the opportunity to add another downtown Newark spot to their portfolio.

But, given the declining popularity of craft beer, he said they thought the college town’s main drag was due for something different.

During visits to his children’s colleges elsewhere, he had dined at steakhouses that appeared to be thriving, Martuscelli said, and thought a similar concept would succeed in Delaware.

But, he added, “we don’t want to make this your typical Steak 48 kind of place.”

He envisions a restaurant where faculty members will gather and visiting parents will take their children out to eat. But he said there will be wood tables, not white tablecloths, and plenty of “quaint little rooms” for private gatherings.

They plan to turn one of those rooms into a library-style space with University of Delaware memorabilia and old yearbooks, he said.

As part of his $1 million in upgrades, Martuscelli said he is installing a new HVAC system and replacing the floors and carpeting.

He said he anticipates starting with dinner service and weekend brunch.

Rockwell’s will have live music, but it won’t be a late-night hangout — Martuscelli will leave the partying to Klondike Kate’s across the street, he said with a laugh.

The restaurant won’t look like an Iron Hill, Martuscelli said, but they plan to display two of the brewery’s old copper beer mash tuns — which the landlord bid on at Iron Hill’s bankruptcy auction — as an ode to the former tenant.

Enterprising home brewers Mark Edelson and Kevin Finn, along with restaurateur Kevin Davies, poured their first beer for customers at the Newark brewpub in 1996.

They expanded over the decades, with a focus on bringing their family-friendly craft-beer spots to the Philly suburbs.

In recent years, Iron Hill took on a new private-equity owner, opened locations South Carolina and Georgia, and began canning beer out of a massive production facility in Exton. All this occurred amid the backdrop of the pandemic, which upended the restaurant industry, and a decline in the U.S. drinking rate.

When Iron Hill Brewery filed for bankruptcy this fall, the company had more than $20 million in debt, with about $125,000 in the bank, according to court documents.