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Late last week, New Orleans city council member Kristin Palmer announced that the council approved plans for a location of Chick-fil-A in Algiers on New Orleans’s West Bank, celebrating the city’s first stand-alone location of the Atlanta-based fast food chain. Now, two more Chick-fil-A’s are in the works for New Orleans, raising eyebrows for those wary of the chain’s history of supporting anti-LGBTQ causes or, for some, of the notorious local developer behind one of the proposed locations, Sidney Torres.
Something to smile about : the City’s first stand-alone @Chik_Fil_A
— Kristin G. Palmer (@kristingpalmer) April 8, 2021
is coming to #algiers in 2022. @NOLACityCouncil approved a conditional use permit to construct a Chik-fil-A in the Algiers Plaza Shopping Ctr, 4100 General DeGaulle. Thanks to my team for working with pic.twitter.com/UCOIkZBvfv
Chick-fil-A and Torres’s plans were outlined in a letter sent to the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization this week, seeking approval for a Chick-fil-A on the corner of Tulane Avenue and South Carrollton Avenue in Mid-City. The address at 4068 Tulane Avenue is currently home to Torres’s NOLA Chick drive-thru restaurant, which he quietly opened a few months back in early 2021 (it was previously a Burger King, which closed in Summer 2020). The plans propose demolishing the existing building and building a new 2,600-square-foot restaurant set further back from the street. It would be drive-thru-only, with plans for two drive-thru lanes and patio seating for 16 people, but no inside dining. “This is a newer model for Chick-fil-A with exclusive service to vehicles and pedestrians of the Tulane and Carrollton corridors with outdoor patio space,” the letter to MCNO says.
A third Chick-fil-A is planned for downtown, reports NOLA.com, proposed for the ground floor of the CBD building that holds Dave & Buster’s and Hurts Donuts. It would be pedestrian-only, with an entrance on Loyola Avenue.
Currently, the only Chick-fil-A’s in New Orleans are also pedestrian-only, inside buildings on the campuses of Xavier University and the University of New Orleans. There’s a drive-thru location in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, which often has a long line of cars that spills onto Vets Boulevard. But do New Orleanians, what with our Popeyes and Raising Cane’s, but mostly the Popeyes, really want multiple area Chick-fil-A’s? Judging from the response on Twitter, maybe not — a NOLA.com tweet announcing the influx racked up dozens of side-eye comments about the chain coming to New Orleans and expressing skepticism of Torres’s involvement.
Put one next to Popeyes so we can have a place to park.
— Sherri (@Sherri0503) April 12, 2021
They can keep bland ass bigot chicken out in the suburbs where it belongs.
— Pfizerific 5G heaux fo sheaux (@fyoushoresy) April 13, 2021
They better not put it close to a @PopeyesChicken , cause they’ll get their asses kicked.
— Burdell Woodlin (@WoodlinBurdell) April 13, 2021
Nobody with half a brain in the NOLA area is gonna eat at Chick-Fil-A. They have a terrible social justice record on both race and homophobia. That Sidney is gonna own one is just icing on the boycott cake.
— Melanie Morel-Ensminger (@RevMelanieNOLA) April 12, 2021
Nowhere, keep the chains in the suburbs or better yet, nowhere at all. Companies with a strong anti-LGBTQ history don't deserve our money.
— Lindsay (@NOLAlexis_9) April 13, 2021
Eater has reached out to Chick-fil-A and Sherman Strategies, the company’s local land-use consultant, for comment on the proposed CBD and Mid-City restaurants and will update this story if we hear back. For the Mid-City restaurant attached to Torres, there will be neighborhood participation meetings on April 26, at noon and 6 p.m. For information on how to attend, see here.
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