A Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant is in the early stages of approval for the Gloucester Premium Outlets in Blackwood Gloucester Township, in an outlying undeveloped parcel.
On Tuesday October 22nd the Gloucester Township Planning Board will be reviewing the application for its completeness, to see if it then can move forward to a site plan approval meeting at a later date.
The location for the proposed Chick-fil-A is on an undeveloped parcel of land that sits between Dave and Buster’s and the Route 42 exit roundabout.

That full parcel of land is 2.2 acres and the overhead general site plan docs that I have show the Chick-fil-A building will be positioned closer to the exit segment, with the parking lot more in the center of the lot.
Plans call for a 5,400 square foot Chick-fil-A restaurant with multi-lane drive-thru and other improvements.
While there are Chick-fil-A restaurants in Deptford and Washington Twp, this “Outlets” location could prove to be very popular. First, the Gloucester Premium Outlets have limited dining options after closing their food court a few years ago. Secondly, consider all of the Jersey Shore commuters using Route 42 on their way to the AC Expressway… who will plan a “Hop on, hop off” stop at the new Chick-fil-A.
I created the site plan depiction below based on early marketing documents that I am in possession of. Since they did not come from submission with the application (which would have made them public information), I recreated the site plan. The final submitted plan could differ from this rendering.

This is the same parcel of land where eight years ago an Applebee’s was approved to be developed. Obviously those plans did not come to fruition.
A big kudos to Josh Bakan at The Patch for getting this story first. Of course I’m going to say that I’ve known about this for months (I did), as I have actual real estate marketing plans that show the Chick-fil-A project… but I decided to wait for activity around a Planning Board meeting. You can read Josh’s article here.
So one small source for my articles are newpaper public notices, which I review almost daily. But for this Chick-fil-A project it has not moved to the full approval stage yet, so a newspaper public notice was not required… although the Gloucester Township Planning Board did list the application review on their agenda, which is what Josh from the patch noticed

Regarding the application review aspect… when developing new projects like this the “application” is much more than just a small form that is filled out. The full application requires escrow fees, architectural diagrams, traffic reports, stormwater reports, solid waste and recycling reports, environmental impact statements and more… Simply before Planning Board can review and determine approval, they must have all of the required information available before they can conduct that final grant/deny hearing.
Additionally, New Jersey State Law defines how long a Planning Board has to act on a submitted application, so it’s important that all parties involved are in clear agreement as to when the application is “complete”.
If this application is deemed complete at Tuesday’s meeting, it is expected that they will return in November for the technical review.
The Chick-fil-A in Deptford was fully remodeled earlier this year and features an higher capacity drive-thru. Another new Chick-Fil-A is planned for Glassboro but that has not seen development start as of yet.
Links and Location
Chick-fil-A @ Gloucester Premium Outlets
300 Premium Outlets Drive
Blackwood NJ