New Chick-fil-A near new Biloxi Rouses Market will have high-impact drive thru
The new Rouses Market opening later this summer is getting a tasty neighbor at the corner of Pass and Popp’s Ferry roads in Biloxi.
Plans for a Chick-fil-A went to the Biloxi Development Review Committee Wednesday as engineers for the company asked questions and provided details of the plans for this restaurant, two miles away from the Chick-fil-A at Edgewater Mall in Biloxi.
Chick-fil-A purchased the bank and medical office that were along Pass Road at the south side of the shopping center. The two buildings will be demolished and the new restaurant will be built there, the engineers said.
The nearly-5,000-square-foot restaurant will be a new prototype recently used at other locations, said engineer Andy Young.
The double drive-thru lanes will be a new high-impact design to handle large volumes of traffic and feed a lot of people quickly. About 60% of the business at Chick-fil-A comes from the drive-thrus.
There will be plenty of parking for those who eat inside the restaurant and a few outdoor tables also are in the plans.
Also in the plans are to try to move some of the protected live oak trees on the property into bays in the Rouses parking lot, said Jerry Creel, Biloxi community development director.
“These are some beautiful trees,” he said, which need to try to be protected.
Work continues to transform a former grocery store that stood empty for years into a new Rouses Market.
Creel said the building was gutted down to the dirt floors to run refrigerant lines.
“It will be like a brand new Rouses. Something we’ll be proud of,” Creel said.
The 40,000-square-foot store at 2348 Pass Road will have local seafood and local produce, a sausage kitchen, smokehouse, bakery, florist and seafood boiling room.
Other businesses owners want to open next to or close to Rouses, Creel said.
“That’s going to redevelop that whole shopping center,” he said.
