Festus will be the site of a sixth La Pachanga Mexican Restaurant, owner Adolfo Reyes said Thursday (May 2).
Reyes already has La Pachanga restaurants in Crystal City, Arnold, Herculaneum, Bonne Terre in Missouri and one in Sullivan, Ind.
He said the new La Pachanga will be built in the Larry Goodwin planned unit development south of Hwy. A that includes 50 acres overlooking I-55 in the south part of Festus.
“We don’t know when (construction will begin),” he said. “We bought a parcel and are waiting for them to finish the roads. We’re trying to get it open by February 2020.”
Reyes said he also did not yet know the address of the new restaurant.
“We’ll hire, probably, 50 to 80 people for the new restaurant,” he said.
Reyes said the new La Pachanga will offer some amenities the other five restaurants don’t.
“We’ll offer some new things, like a kids’ playground,” he said. “We’ll have one patio for smoking, and one patio and the inside (will be) no smoking. We’re going to have a banquet room and a room for meetings.”
Reyes said the menu will remain the same as the other restaurants.
“We’ll have TVs like at the others and a bar area and the dining area like the others,” Reyes said.
The PUD’s first tenant was a KFC restaurant that opened in December 2018 at 1199 Shapiro Drive. An existing nearby business, R.P. Lumber, was the second company to announce it was entering the PUD when its owners decided to extend their property into Goodwin’s development.
Hampton Inn is slated to be built south of the KFC, according to Festus City Administrator Greg Camp.
