AUGUSTA — Popeyes restaurant chain is bringing its fried chicken and other New Orleans-style fast food to Maine’s capital city.

The restaurant will be built on a now-vacant lot adjacent to the lower end of the Kmart plaza site off Western Avenue currently being redeveloped, where a Friendly’s restaurant was located for several years before being torn down in 2023.

Currently, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen restaurants are in West Gardiner, South Portland and Kennebunk. One in Lewiston is expected to open soon.

The Augusta Planning Board unanimously approved a minor development permit for the restaurant Tuesday, with several board members saying they’re pleased to see the vacant site put back into use as a restaurant again, despite concerns some of them had about lines from the restaurant’s drive-thru potentially backing up,

“It’s going to be nice to see something go back in that area, and my 16-year-old is very excited about this,” Mandy Massey, board member, said.

Douglas Papa seemed pretty excited about it, too, saying it should be a great place for people who live in that part of the city to be able to walk to get a meal, a job, or both.

“If people don’t have a car, and they want to eat fried chicken, this is definitely the place to go if they’re located near downtown Augusta, instead of walking all the way up to Kentucky Fried Chicken,” on Civic Center Drive, said Papa, who spoke in favor of the proposal at the board meeting.

“If you want somewhere people can take themselves, or their significant other, on a nice date, it would be a great spot to do it at this Popeyes on Western Avenue,” he  said. “I also think it’d be great for employment, because we have a number of unemployed people, as well as homeless people … they’d probably be able to walk to this place, get a job, as well as a great meal.”

Popeyes officials did not immediately return an email Wednesday seeking comment or to confirm the new restaurant opening.

The 2,536-square-foot restaurant will have a drive-thru with room for 14 vehicles to line up, which Betsy Poulin, city planner, said is what the city’s ordinance requires.

Some board members expressed concern that may not be enough at times.

“I’ve been to the Popeyes in South Portland before, multiple times,” board member Ben Bussiere said. “Sometimes it gets really busy.”

Bussiere later said that while he still had concerns about vehicles cueing up on the property, which is just over 1 acre, the layout and traffic flow planned appears similar to that in South Portland, where it seemed to work.

Doug Reynolds, of Gorrill Palmer, a firm representing Popeyes on the proposal, said if long lines end up being a problem on the site they would take steps to address them.

Poulin said the outdoor speaker for the drive-thru will presumably not exceed the city’s noise limit of 60 decibels at its property lines, but if that was a problem, the city’s code enforcement officers would address those concerns.

The site will be accessible directly from Western Avenue or from the Kmart plaza parking lot, which it shares with a new VIP Tires & Service.

The Kmart plaza above and behind it is currently under redevelopment, with a proposal to build a hotel and apartment building on the site. The derelict former Kmart building and strip mall have been demolished.

“Maybe in a month or so we’ll see redevelopment plans for this site,” Poulin said of the Kmart site. “So there’s a lot of things happening up in this area of the city.”

Popeyes was founded in 1972 when Al Copeland opened a small restaurant featuring New Orleans-style fried chicken, according to its website, and now has more than 2,700 restaurants.