Panda Express is zooming into the Town of Herndon.
The fast-food chain will take over the former Burger King drive-thru restaurant at 598 Elden Street, proposing renovations that the Herndon Architectural Review Board will discuss at a work session tonight (Wednesday).
The 3,836-square-foot, free-standing building has been vacant since Burger King unexpectedly shuttered on April 11, 2023, just a couple of days after the company’s Reston location also closed.
As part of its build-out, Panda Express is seeking to make some changes to the building’s facade and elevation, though the general structure will remain in place.
“We are revamping the current building to capture Panda’s branding history,” an architectural designer hired by the restaurant said in a letter to the board. “The building will reuse the current brick component with a paint finish…With the changes in the elevations, the overall location of the exterior doors, storefront glazing, and drive-thru windows will remain in its original location.”
According to renderings and a town staff report, the renovation will remove the existing drive-thru canopy and one drive-thru window on the building’s north side, along with two “faux gable” elements with pointed roofs.
A second drive-thru window will be replaced and get a new canopy. In some areas, including around the drive-thru window, the brick facade will be clad in faux-wood siding. In other areas, the applicant has proposed adding painted brick, though town staff are seeking more clarity on how similar the color will be to the existing brick.
“It is typically not best practice to employ painted brick as a long-term design feature for commercial structures. It should be expected that within five years the paint will start to fail and the color of the base brick behind the paint will begin to show,” the staff report said, citing the former Mellow Mushroom building as a recent example of paint flaking off.
Staff suggested revisions to the facade design that they said would improve its “material and aesthetic durability,” including an increased use of brick in place of an insulation system known as EIFS that the town discourages “because of its low quality, flat appearance and tendency to age quickly.”
Though the renderings include signage, those licenses will be reviewed administratively as a separate case, staff said.
The ARB isn’t expected to vote on the application at tonight’s meeting, which will start at 7:30 p.m. Staff recommended postponing a decision to a future public hearing so the applicant has time to submit additional materials and make revisions in response to the board’s feedback.
Panda Express didn’t return a request for comment by press time, including on when the new restaurant might open.
This will be the company’s only restaurant in the immediate Herndon or Reston area, but it can be found elsewhere in Fairfax County, including at Chantilly’s Greenbriar Town Center, Fair Oaks Mall and Tysons Corner Center.
