Construction of the new Freebirds restaurant in Waco could begin as early as this week.
Craving more information on the arrival of Freebirds, I spoke with some managers of stores in the shopping center at New Road and Franklin Avenue on Tuesday afternoon and learned groundbreaking could be happening very soon.
Technically, ground has already been broken. A manager at Double Dave's said a crew came in recently, dug up enough concrete to drop in some pipes and then covered up the holes. But my guess is we're about to begin seeing more substantial changes to that parking lot.
Oh yeah, as indicated in the photo, the Freebirds will sit in the area between U-Swirl and Double Dave's. There's at least 100 yards of expanse between the two, which seems like plenty of room for everyone.
I've heard rumblings that some managers within the shopping center are concerned that Freebirds will take up too much parking. That wasn't the case with the managers I spoke with this week. However, the manager at U-Swirl said she can somewhat understand Academy Sports and Outdoors being a little worried as their Black Friday traffic and other holiday traffic can stretch throughout the parking lot.
I don't know, I guess Black Friday shoppers will just have to walk a little farther to buy their sneakers and UnderArmour gear and swimming goggles. It's a small price to pay to finally get a Freebirds.
Other than that, the people at U-Swirl and Double Dave's seem as excited as the rest of us about recent developments. Paulette, the manager at Double Dave's said the owner of that store is a big Freebirds fan and the employees are pumped to have another option for food during their lunch and dinner breaks.
"There's only so much frozen yogurt you can eat," Paulette said.
On a personal note, I realized that the Freebirds will be within walking distance of my house as it will be adjacent to the gym where I routinely walk. This fulfills a lifelong dream of mine. And by lifelong I mean the last 12 years or so.
One more bite: In case you're wondering, we are committed to following this story extremely closely. I'm going to write about it as often as news seems worthy. I have a call in with the Freebirds people and expect to hear from them within the next week. When that happens, I'm going to hit you with more Freebirds info. I'll try not to overdo it, like I won't dedicate a blog to drywall going up or anything. Well, then again I might.
