Joliet Chick-fil-A Underway: Photo Gallery

JOLIET, IL — If you Google search "Joliet" and "Chick-fil-A," two of the top news articles from this summer appear. One is the Joliet Patch headline from June 23: "Joliet Chick-fil-A Project Moving Forward, Opening Early 2021." The second is a June 20 headline from The Herald-News print newspaper: "Chick-del-Ay: Joliet Chick-fil-A Plans Put On Hold."

Construction of the Joliet Chick-fil-A restaurant is not on hold as thousands of daily motorists traveling along Route 30 near the Louis Joliet Mall can see. Construction of the highly anticipated double drive-thru Joliet restaurant is very much underway.

On Thursday afternoon, Joliet Patch was given access to the construction site to show all the work being done. Joliet's Welsch's Ready Mix concrete company was pouring concrete for the double drive-thru area.

The concrete foundation for the main restaurant building has already been poured.

Talk of opening a Chick-fil-A in Joliet has been ongoing since Joliet news radio station WJOL 1340-AM broke the news in April 2019. The redevelopment project picked up speed this summer when demolition cranes tore down the former Lone Star Steakhouse that closed three summers ago.

For thousands of Joliet and Plainfield area residents, the opening of the Plainfield Road Chick-fil-A double-drive thru can't happen soon enough.

But it's happening, it's definitely happening.