EVERETT – Customers are lining up in the drive-through lane at Burger King along Broadway again, where Whoppers are broiling for the first time in more than three years.

The fast-food chain’s old restaurant at 2424 Broadway shut down in March 2002 and sat empty, boarded up and regularly vandalized, until February.

That’s when the building was torn down to make room for the new one, which opened for business June 20.

“It’s doing very, very well,” said Dan Gettemy, one of the new franchise partners who owns the new restaurant. “It’s doing three times what the other restaurant did when it was there. Granted, it’s an opening week … but I think it will settle in really nicely.”

Gettemy and Bill Bishop own 27 Burger King locations in Western Washington, including 10 in Snohomish County. Their new 3,100-square-foot restaurant employs 39 people.

The old structure at the Broadway address was built in the 1970s and operated as a Herfy’s burger joint before it became Burger King. Over the years, the old building proved inadequate to handle a large number of drive-up customers. The new one eliminates that problem, Gettemy said.

“I’m very happy with the new layout. We’re getting a lot of good customer comments about the way the drive-through’s laid out,” he said, adding that it can handle a lineup of eight cars at once. “I do think it’s one of the best drive-throughs now on Broadway.”

Gettemy’s and Bishop’s franchise company isn’t the same one that operated the previous Burger King. That Auburn-based franchisee, blaming a national decline in the chain’s sales and disagreements with Burger King, closed a number of Puget Sound outlets in 2002. Other Burger Kings in the county also closed around the same time.

Since then, the national chain has been sold by an overseas liquor company to a group of U.S. investors. That’s helped Burger King begin turning around sales, Gettemy said.

He hopes that, along with the new restaurant and other redevelopment projects in downtown Everett, will help his newest location succeed.

“Ever since the Everett Events Center came in, you’re seeing a resurgence of this area, which is nice to see,” he said.

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@ heraldnet.com.

Michael V. Martina / The Herald

The new Burger King at 2424 Broadway in Everett opened about a week ago. It replaces the long-closed Burger King on the same spot.