State College-Area Chick-fil-A Set to Reopen

The State College area’s only Chick-fil-A is ready to reopen after being closed for four months for a drive-thru expansion and renovations.

The chicken restaurant at 1938 N. Atherton St. will reopen at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, according to posts on the franchise location’s Facebook page on Monday night. It has been closed since June 16.

After longstanding issues with traffic entering the Chick-fil-A property backing up onto North Atherton Street, Patton Township supervisors in March approved a land development plan to add a second drive-through lane, expand kitchen capacity and a redesign the pickup area.

“Essentially all of this is meant to increase the efficiency of the site,” Tyler Prime, attorney for Chick-fil-A on the project, said at the time. “As everyone is aware, this is a high-volume location and we’re looking to speed it up… modernize the site and just overall make it more efficient.”

A dual drive-through now wraps around the building before narrowing to one lane at the exit. The restaurant previously could stack 15 cars in the drive-through, with overflow space for four to eight. The dual drive-through will be able to stack 45 cars before overflow, Justin Thornton of Colliers Engineering and Design, said.

In addition to having two drive-through speaker boxes, a face-to-face ordering canopy has been added allowing employees to take orders on iPads during high-volume times.

As the drive-through lanes wrap around the building, the pickup area has an outside meal delivery canopy. The single pickup window is replaced with a door that allows four to six employees to be delivering meals to vehicles.

A small expansion to the building increased the kitchen capacity and added staging space near the pickup door.

No seating has been added to the restaurant and 11 parking stalls will be removed to accommodate the expanded drive-through.

“We do feel the benefit of the longer drive-through lane outweighs the loss of parking,” Thornton said in March, noting that the stalls that were removed were often blocked by drive-thru traffic.