Customers line up in 2015 for Toscanini’s ice cream at its once and future location in Lafayette Square. (Photo: Marc Levy)

Toscanini’s ice cream is looking to reopen in Lafayette Square at the end of July or beginning of August, co-owner Gus Rancatore said Saturday in a Facebook post.

Opened in 1981, the 899 Main St. location at the southeast end of Central Square closed Jan. 23, 2018, to make way for construction of the boutique hotel 907 Main, which includes a ground-floor restaurant called The Dial, a patisserie called Praline and a rooftop lounge called The Blue Owl that is being prepped for an opening this summer. Toscanini’s was always intended to return to the site and it was unfortunate it couldn’t open at the same time as the hotel, owner Patrick Barrett said in September.

In the meantime, Rancatore and sister Mimi Rancatore opened a Toscanini’s at 159 First St., East Cambridge, on Jan. 25, 2018 – leaving just a one-day gap when people couldn’t get its famous ice cream.

The coronavirus pandemic cut Toscanini’s schedule to fewer hours on fewer days, and added to uncertainty about when it could reopen at its old location.

“I have long lost track of when we originally hoped to reopen our store in Lafayette Square or Central Square,” Rancatore said Saturday. “During these ‘interesting times’ it has been difficult to predict much. At the moment we hope to reopen in 45 days,” or 3.5 years after closing there.

The First Street location is now the kitchen and storage place for the ice cream – which Food & Wine identified just Thursday as the best in Massachusetts – and is expected to stay open after Tosci’s return to Lafayette Square.