LaSalle’s first McDonald’s restaurant opens

The first McDonald’s restaurant in LaSalle is now open. CTV Windsor’s Bob Bellacicco has more.

People were lined up before 11 a.m. Friday morning to check out the first business to open in the Shoppes at Heritage Plaza.

“I’ve been saying for years that this area needs a Tim Horton’s, a McDonald’s. All this. I love it,” one excited customer said.

Franchisee Jason Trussell hosted about 300 people Thursday night to see the restaurant which offers the latest on both sides of the counter. He believes the development brings a new vibrancy to the area.

“We’ve hired 70 people, and we’ve taken 30 from our other locations that have sort of transferred here,” Trussell told CTV News.

“We look forward to being part of the fabric of the community here.”

According to developer Scott D’Amore, the project is moving along faster than anticipated.

“We were just here, over there on this site a few months ago doing groundbreaking,” the president of the D’Amore Group said while pointing toward the area where a shovel ceremony took place in early July.

“At that time there was no framing, anything up even for this. Then in a matter of months to get everything up and built and then to get this open is unbelievable.”

The $200 million development is the largest in LaSalle’s history with the future homes of several stores taking shape.

Tim Horton’s is being built on the north side of McDonald’s with D’Amore suspecting they’ll be open sometime in December.

“From there it’s just going to be one after the other hopefully for the next eight months or so of opening new businesses and different things,” LaSalle mayor Crystal Meloche anticipated.

“A lot of unique things for the town too.”

Residents like Hardeep Gill, who brought his family to the McDonald’s opening, are excited for the development, which is expected to employ about 500 people, exceeding the original estimate of 400.

“We’ve been here for seven years, and we always had to go to Windsor to grab everything for the kids, so everything is close, we’re going to have a Shoppers, Tims. It’s going to be awesome for us. Everything’s close by our house. We needed something like this.”

D’Amore said the development is looking to add a gas bar that may include a car wash, an oil change business, and name a hotel operator at some point.

“A project like this really does transform the whole traffic pattern and daily pattern of people, because this now becomes a destination that draws people right here and has them coming here for, really, just about anything they need,” D’Amore said.

Meloche likes the fact residents will be able to walk or ride their bike to the area, which helps with other parts of town, like Malden Road.

“It helps with congestion there too, so this is really good for us.”