Wentzville's Panda Express Getting Ready for Construction

Construction fencing has gone up around the outlot that will be home soon to a new Panda Express restaurant in Wentzville.

The site plan and conditional use permit for the restaurant was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Aldermen in May.

The first Panda Express opened in 1983 in California as an offshoot of the Panda Inn Chinese restaurant. According to the Panda Express website, the restaurant's menu of "gourmet Chinese food" also now offers "Wok Smart" entrees with 250 calories or fewer.

The new Wentzville location, between and in the Wentzville Crossroads Marketplace, will include a drive-through.

Residents should also see construction soon on two other projects that were approved by the city in February.

Ross Dress for Less, a discount department store, is in the process of opening one of its first Missouri locations in with a new 25,000 square foot store planned for the vacant lot between and Dress Barn. The shopping center is also anchored by .

Not far away, Fairfield Inn and Suites, a hotel chain owned by Marriott, is planning to build a new hotel near the intersection of West Pearce Boulevard and Wentville Parkway.

The new hotel would stand four-stories tall and be the first Generation 5 prototype—with new contemporary aesthetics for the modern traveler—of the hotel chain in the country, according to city documents.