Downtown Milwaukee To Receive First Chick-Fil-A

FINALLY.  It’s here, folks. Chick-Fil-A has made their way to Milwaukee.

At Sunday’s Zoning and Neighborhood Development Meeting, Chick-Fil-A received unanimous approval from City of Milwaukee’s ZND for a zoning variance at their site of choice for their first standalone Milwaukee-proper restaurant.

Chick-Fil-A currently has a restaurant located inside of the Fiserv Forum, which has essentially been frozen until about a week ago, when Alex Lasry finally decided to let people into the stadium. We have not been able to confirm with our sources if that decision was due to Lasry’s recent vaccination that he somehow received, or if it’s due to the fact that he was hemorrhaging money without fans in the Forum. Either way, the stadium is open and the CFA inside is presumably excited to get back to work. Other Milwaukee-area locations include Brookfield, West Allis, and the recently completed Delafield.

Per CFA’s submittals to the ZND Board, the restaurant will be the largest in the state, at over 15,000 square feet for the building alone. It will feature a playplace that is sized for adults (ball pit, here I come!) and is made out of a space-age plastic that is germicidal in nature and promises to kill all of the germs and sperms that made playtime in previous generations of playplaces a questionable activity at best. The restaurant will also have three drive-thru lanes, as well as a first-of-it’s-kind escalator that will move patrons from the planned boat docks up the hill and back, so even those traveling by canoe, kayak, or powerboat can get their chickie fix. The boat docks and an outdoor seating area are located riverside, at the bottom of a roughly 50′ cliff separating the planned restaurant location from the riverbank.

The national fried chicken giant has been working with a very small local real estate firm to purchase the land, located on the Milwaukee river at 1717 N. Water Street, at the diversion of Brady and Water streets. Per an anonymous source at said real estate firm, “This was the final piece of the pizza that CFA needed to complete the requirements of our Purchase and Sale Agreement. We will be closing on the land within 30 days and look forward to munching on some tasty nuggies and sammies shortly thereafter. We haven’t been able to develop this site in the time that we’ve owned it due to an innumerable amount of factors and endless indecision, so we figured we’d finally just give up and give the people what they want”

Can’t wait for them nuggies. In the meantime, be sure to patronize small businesses and prioritize locally owned restaurants, they’re struggling and need our help. Let it be known that CFA is a franchise model, and owners generally are not allowed to own or be involved with other franchises or additional CFA locations, so technically, they’re local-owned businesses.

Richard Taste is Nightly Reporter and Senior Editor at Wisconsin News Today since January of 2021. Dick has studied worldwide, from Oxford to Yale, and has been featured in publications such as Playboy Magazine, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. In his free time, Mr. Taste enjoys traveling the streets of beautiful West Allis, Wisconsin with his mail-order wife, Svetlana.