Feliz Navidad! Chipotle and drive-thru Panera open

By Jill Draper

Panera Bread and Chipotle Mexican Grill are now open for business in a new location near the northeast corner of W. 103rd Street and State Line Road. The two casual food restaurants share a wall and a parking lot, but each has a separate outdoor eating area in the space where Einstein Bros. Bagels once stood.

Leaving its equipment, furniture and color palette of warm earth tones behind, the new Panera has an updated gray tone look with a computerized self-ordering station just inside the entrance. The biggest change, however, is a drive-thru lane on the south side of the building. That’s the main reason the restaurant moved from its former location less than one block away, says Devon Schuster, a vice president at Lane4 Property Group, which owns the State Line Shopping Center.

“They expect to do a lot more business with the drive-thru,” he says.

Chipotle’s layout is similar to those at other locations, although a bit smaller than the restaurant a few miles south on State Line Road. The look is also less rustic with light-colored wooden tables and modern black chairs. It does not have a drive-thru. Customers enter on the east side for both restaurants.

Schuster says landscaping is still being installed around the new eateries as well as the entire shopping center, which will feature a variety of trees, shrubs and grassy areas when completed. “It will be a dramatic improvement—a big enhancement to what was there,” he says.

Façade improvements to the CVS Pharmacy are continuing, as well as construction for an automotive group (which the Telegraph has identified as a Tesla Motors Showroom and Service Center) at the shopping center’s north end. Schuster says this tenant should be open for business by mid- to late summer.

The cut-thru to the Price Chopper parking lot which runs behind the north end of the shopping center is currently closed, but it will reopen after construction is finished, he says.