Just a couple of weeks after an April fire destroyed his Windham auto repair shop, after the smoke cleared and he started to cope with the loss of his longtime business, Frank Jimino sat down with his wife Theresa and started to discuss the future.

“I thought I’d go and be a professional poker player,” Jimino joked. “That was the first idea. I told her I didn’t need to go to Vegas. I’d settle for Atlantic City.

“She didn’t think that was such a good idea.”

While the dreamer in Jimino may have been ready to scrap his steady living for a shot at the big time, he always knew he would return to what he knows best.

Last week, he cleared a significant hurdle when the Windham Zoning Board approved a conditional use permit that will allow him to reopen Jimino’s Saab & Volvo at his River Road home, where he will move the business after 22 years at 186 Roosevelt Trail (Route 302). Jimino is aiming for a September grand opening.

“I’ve already got a garage standing down there,” said Jimino. “The building is up, I just haven’t finished the inside yet.”

The former site of Jimino’s Saab & Volvo, where Jimino and his father Louis opened the shop in 1986, was burned to the ground on April 17. A spark from static electricity ignited gasoline, and the fire quickly spread throughout the garage.

Firefighters from five towns arrived to battle the blaze, and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was called to the scene to contain fluids and lubricants used in the shop. Route 302 was closed for more than three hours.

In just moments, Jimino’s livelihood was gone.

“The first week or two is a blur,” he said this week as he finished cleaning up from the fire and prepared to start working on his new garage. “I can remember walking around. You walk out to the same place for 22 years, and now it’s gone. It was just a blur.”

After his poker plans flopped, Jimino and his wife and mother discussed reopening the business in a 40-by-40-foot garage he built four years ago at his home at 50 River Road. While he designed the garage to be large enough to accommodate the equipment necessary for an auto repair shop, Jimino never thought it would actually house his business.

“I wanted to use it to play with my race car and my bike,” he said.

After the final dumpsters were removed from the former site earlier this week, Jimino shifted all his attention to finishing the inside of the garage. He is building an insulated and soundproofed office in one corner of the building, and is in the process of buying equipment for the garage.

The tools and devices lost in the fire were bought over the course of two decades, he said, so the cost was spread out and barely noticeable. That is not the case when buying it all at once, Jimino said.

“Most guys would probably think it’s cool to go out and buy new equipment,” he said with a laugh. “But to sit down and replace it is a whole different program.”

But these issues are just tiny road bumps on the path back to business, Jimino said, and he is happy to be on his way. On May 29, the Zoning Board unanimously approved his permit, which was required because Jimino wants to run an auto repair business in a farm zone.

At the new shop, Jimino is limited to working on three cars at a time and must be the sole employee. At his old site, Jimino had both a full-time and part-time employee in addition to himself, and they had a line of cars outside ready for repair.

“We were booked all the time,” he said. “We were turning out car after car after car.”

But the new, scaled business that Jimino is planning to operate on River Road will give him more time to relax, and to attend the car auctions that he enjoys. Besides having to figure out how to handle the 120-strong customer base he built at his old, bigger shop, Jimino is excited to start a new chapter.

“It was a good business,” Jimino said of his shop on Route 302. “It raised three kids and sent them through school. It gave us a good living.

“But this will be good. I’m looking forward to it.”

Firefighters from Windham and four surrounding towns fight a fire at Jimino’s Saab & Volvo on Route 302 Thursday. The blaze destroyed the garage, but crews prevented the fire from spreading to the Jimino home at right.