Representatives from Auxiliary Services and Waffle House held a small ground-breaking ceremony at Tech Square last Friday, Feb. 5. The ceremony will start off a 60-90 day construction period leading up to the grand opening of the restaurant, tentatively planned to be some time in late spring.
“This is not typical construction for Waffle House. They’re used to purchasing a piece of land, building their prototype on that property and having a good understanding of how long it takes to do that. In this case they are renovating an existing space, which is not their typical method of building a Waffle House,” said Rich Steele, director of the Student Center.
The ground-breaking ceremony was a small event that occurred early Friday morning with approximately 6 people present. Of those in attendance were Steele, retail manager Lara Sexton, Georgia Tech Foundation chief financial officer Mark Long and a number of operating managers from Waffle House.
The event included a ceremonial first hit with a sledge hammer to mark the beginning of construction. While the time frame for the construction is set, there still is no definite grand opening date for the restaurant.
“It’s still up in the air. They’ll need a few weeks to get into their renovation to make sure they understand anything that might hinder their schedule. As they’re just getting started, it’s difficult to estimate an opening date at this point,” Steele said.
“There is no group that has been more motivated to complete a restaurant build-out than Waffle House has been. They’re very excited to be on the Georgia Tech campus. There’s a huge percentage of people that work in their corporate office who are Georgia Tech alums,” Steele said.
Designers plan on giving this new Waffle House a flair with color and desing unique to Tech.
“[Waffle House] number[s] every store and they even chose 1885 as the number of the store because that is the founding year for Georgia Tech. So I think folks will find that this is going to be a very, very unique Waffle House that has an uncanny connection to Georgia tech. To our history, to some traditions , to some of the icons and symbols of Georgia Tech. And it takes a very unique look and feel and it takes a little longer to create that uniqueness in terms of design and planning,” Steele said.