SCHENECTADY — Bombers Burrito Bar, so the story goes, was founded in 1997 with $15,000 in winnings from a poker game at Turning Stone Casino.

Located in Albany’s Center Square neighborhood, between Empire State Plaza and Washington Park, it’s on the main drag, Lark Street — arguably the hippest few blocks in the Capital Region. Soon, Bombers will be opening another, larger restaurant in downtown Schenectady, on State Street across from Proctors, which could mean the hipness quotient there is on the rise.

The expansion of Bombers might be more or less of a gamble than that original poker game, which according to the Bombers Web site allowed owner Matt Baumgartner to pursue his restaurant dreams. He’s had one other new venture — a successful Albany night spot he sold to concentrate on Bombers — and is looking to create a franchise out of his funky burrito eatery.

At any rate, coming to the Electric City is a gamble he’s comfortable with.

The move comes as downtown Schenectady, and especially the 400 block of State Street, has been abuzz with redevelopment, including other restaurants such as Angelo’s Aperitivo Bistro and Wine Bar on the other side of the street. On the Bombers side of State Street, the operator of another Albany-based restaurant-pub, The Big House, is scheduled to open a second location, although this has been plagued by delays. The Bombers opening has been slightly delayed, and is now expected in March or April, said Baumgartner.

Bombers will be in the ground floor and basement of the brick-facade, three-story Grant Building, which was built in 1928 and now stands in front of the more modern Center City complex. The Bombers building project is getting a $20,000 facade restoration grant from the Metroplex Development Authority, which was created by the state and county governments in 1998 and has helped spur most of the development in downtown.

Metroplex Chairman Ray Gillen said, “As we build downtown we are seeking out unique local brands” like Bombers.

Baumgartner, 34, is an Albany resident who went to Union College in Schenectady. Gillen said he had to be sold on Schenectady.

“We reached out to Matt and he was skeptical at first, but when he came over to visit and saw the rapid pace of development he started looking seriously at a Schenectady location,” the Metroplex chairman said.

Baumgartner is sold on Schenectady now.

“Anytime you start a business there’s a risk involved,” he said. But “I’m more excited than nervous. Schenectady is an ideal city for a Bombers.”

THE RIGHT MARKET

Baumgartner had first pondered putting the second Bombers in Burlington, Vermont’s biggest city, which has a lot of students and a year-round population base. He decided, though, that Burlington was too far away for him to keep an eye on things there and in Albany.

Schenectady, Baumgartner said, has the regional population base, downtown office workers and evening entertainment mix to provide a market for what he offers. In Albany, he said, college students make their way to Bombers every day, and he’s expecting to draw on that market in Schenectady, too.

Phil Wajda, director of communications for Union College, said students have been going downtown more with the upswing in activities there. One of the new draws, the movie theater at State Street and Broadway, was proposed by a former Union president, Roger Hull, as a way of attracting students downtown. Wajda said he thinks it does bring them there, some using the free trolley bus provided by Union. Students also take in theatrical performances at the expanded Proctors, Wajda said.

And will Union students go to Bombers? “I think so,” Wajda said. “If it’s good food.”

In Albany, the restaurant’s Web site says, Bombers “quickly became a hot spot for students, poor rock bands, cheap state workers and pretty much anyone with a tattoo and multiple facial piercings.” It expanded upstairs from his basement origin, and now a wide variety of beers and margaritas can be ordered from the bar, along with tacos, chicken wings and the signature big burritos — into which are stuffed a whole lot of meat, beans, cheese, rice, lettuce and other ingredients.

There will be alcohol served in the Schenectady restaurant, too, Baumgartner said, but the emphasis will be on food. While the Albany Bombers stays open until 4 a.m., the closing time in Schenectady will be 1 a.m. The Schenectady place will have about 25 employees, as compared to the 40 or 50 in Albany, because it will get by without wait staff, serving food cafeteria-style.

But the new restaurant will have the same “alternative feeling,” he said, and the fresh food from local suppliers.

LOCAL LINEUP

“We are building a unique place downtown that does not feature the same old same old locations,” Gillen said in an e-mail, meaning it will be different from the malls and chain stores that have spread over the suburbs of America. “We are featuring great local brands: LaSortoria [clothing store], Northeastern Fine Jewelry, Villa Italia, Angelo Mazzone, The Big House, Proctors, etc. Even our cinema operator is different than normal chain-style movie houses. Bombers is a great addition to this lineup of local brands in our new downtown.”

Baumgartner, ironically, does envisage franchising Bombers, opening them up in other places, which would make the brand less unique. But they’d still be locally owned, he said, even if by different people, and the local connections will help Bombers stand out from the competition.

In 2005, he opened the fashionable Noche bar in Albany on Broadway north of downtown, in a warehouse district. But he sold that business the next year to concentrate on Bombers.

While Bombers remains very much at home at its Albany base, Baumgartner said, it also has outgrown it. And parking is easier to find in Schenectady than on Lark Street.