The Ulster Town Board last week approved the site plan for a new Chick-fil-A restaurant and drive-thru in the place of the now-shuttered Red Lobster. Work to bring the popular, but controversial, chicken-focused fast food chain to the area could begin before the end of the year, though there is no timetable yet for opening.
The plans include tearing down the existing 8,400-square-foot Red Lobster building to replace it with a 5,198-square-foot restaurant with drive-thru, with a pair of ordering kiosks, and 101 parking spaces.
Project representative Timothy Freitag of Bohler Engineering described a quick customer take-out experience with two dedicated drive-thru lanes with capacity for 32 vehicles. The drive-thru will wrap around the frontage, with walk-in customers having access without crossing those lanes. Drive-thru orders will be completed in an atypical way.
“Instead of a pickup window, they’ve got a door,” Frietag said. “They’ll utilize team members to hand-deliver meals to lane one or lane two to really expedite service and provide more face-to-face interaction for a better customer experience.”
Between an initial presentation before the Ulster Town Board and the meeting held on Thursday, October 16, the applicant has already been before the Ulster County Planning Board, which led to the angle of the proposed restaurant being slightly altered due to the possibility of the intersection of Route 9W and Miron Lane one day becoming a traffic circle.
Other than identifying the possible need to use that corner of the property, there are no design plans in place for a future traffic circle. But just in case…
“The county as part of the 239-M review process recommended that we account for that potential and get the business and the operations out of that area of the property to allow for that in the future should it come to fruition,” Freitag said. “The applicant was willing to work with the town and the county in that they slightly rotated the building. And we were able to leave the drive-through exit where it is.”
After completion, the restaurant would be open from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. On average, the application estimates hourly weekday morning peak traffic would be around 28 vehicles entering and 25 leaving per hour; midday peak 172 entering and 166 leaving; and evening peak 142 entering and 119 exiting. Saturdays could see an hourly peak increase to around 195 vehicles entering and 187 exiting.
The proposal estimates the need for between 125-150 employees, with more seasoned Chick-fil-A staff there for the first two weeks where demand is likely to be higher.
“During the first week or two, there is excitement; Chick-fil-A acknowledges that,” said Freitag. “Everybody’s excited to go try it. The drive-through queue does get longer during those first two weeks. Chick-fil-A will partner with the town, local police department to provide additional traffic control should it be needed. It’ll be a planned event. And they’ll have additional staff on site flown in from other locations that are experienced and well trained. That way the kitchen is functioning at top efficiency first day when there are new team members that have to be trained.”
Freitag said that while demolition of the existing Red Lobster structure could start before the end of 2025, breaking ground on the Chick-fil-A is unlikely to begin until spring when the ground thaws. As for a specific opening day target, Freitag said that was unclear, but late summer 2026 seems possible.
“They do not like opening between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he said. “They’ve done it before, but they don’t like doing that, not only because of the quick traffic congestion, but they fly in other team members from other locations for two, four weeks for training. They try not to take those team members away from their families during the holidays.”
Other than takeout franchises in the New Baltimore and Plattekill travel plazas on the New York State Thruway, the nearest standalone Chick-fil-A restaurants are located in Albany and Rensselaer.
Headquartered in College Park, Georgia, Chick-fil-A has locations in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The company’s late founder S. Truett Cathy was a Southern Baptist and ran the company through a devout lens, including restaurant closure companywide on Sundays to allow for employees to attend church services.
Chick-fil-A has a history of controversy, primarily around its donations to activist groups dedicated to the elimination of legal same-sex marriage. In 2012, the company’s chairman Dan Cathy said Chick-fil-A backs “the traditional family unit,” igniting a cultural firestorm.
In response, Chick-fil-A released a statement that year saying, “The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender.”
But Chick-fil-A continued to donate to anti-gay marriage organizations, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, as recently as 2018. In a November 2019 interview, the company’s CEO Tim Tassopoulous said Chick-fil-A would stop donating to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army, two organizations frequently criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates.
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