Bellingham's Texas Roadhouse restaurant to start construction sooner than you may expect

Jan. 25—Texas Roadhouse, among Bellingham’s most anticipated chain restaurant arrivals, is planning to open a local location, but the company still needs to do a few things before it can open.

The chain BBQ restaurant, known for its bread rolls with honey cinnamon butter, steaks, ribs, appetizers and cocktails, does not yet have an opening date, but is slowly making progress toward opening its doors.

Back in Sept. 2023, the restaurant filed for its first building permits through the city of Bellingham, with plans to take over the abandoned building that previously was the site of Billy McHale’s Restaurant at 4331 Meridian St., in the parking lot of HomeGoods and Summit Adventure Park, according to previous reporting by The Bellingham Herald.

The new construction permit for the new building had an estimated cost of $1.63 million.

In Nov. 2023, the restaurant filed another permit to demolish the abandoned building of the former restaurant.

Now, after months of silence, the company has filed more permits and is making progress on opening.

“We are excited to join to Bellingham community and are planning to begin construction early spring,” a PR representative for Texas Roadhouse wrote in an email to The Bellingham Herald.

Two new permits have been filed to the city of Bellingham for a new Texas Roadhouse restaurant at 4331 Meridian St. The permits, one for racking and one for a walk-in cooler, were applied for on Jan. 18 and had not been approved as of Jan. 19.

As of Wednesday, the Texas Roadhouse media team had not responded to a request for comment, and the company website had not yet listed Bellingham on their page of locations opening soon.

This story was originally published January 25, 2024, 12:00 PM.

(c)2024 The Bellingham Herald (Bellingham, Wash.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.