NWI Business Ins and Outs: Olive Garden coming to Highland, LongHorn Steakhouse under construction in Schererville, new dunes gift shop open; Sears closes last Illinois location
NWI Business Ins and Outs: Olive Garden coming to Highland, LongHorn Steakhouse under construction in Schererville, new dunes gift shop open; Sears closes last Illinois location
Coming soon
Let the unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks flow.
Olive Garden is coming to Highland.
The Orlando, Florida-based chain of sit-down Italian restaurants known for its pasta, glistening garlic salt-flecked breadsticks and vino is taking over the Old Country Buffet in Highland.
Olive Garden will take over the 10,179-square-foot restaurant at 10445 Indianapolis Boulevard in the Highland Grove Shopping Center, Highland Redevelopment Director Kathy DeGuilio-Fox said.
"It will be coming to Highland's south end," she said. "We're excited."
Olive Garden originally had been eyeing a location in Schererville's Oak District a few miles north on Indianapolis Boulevard but started looking at other locations where it would be easier to get a three-way liquor license, according to Schererville Town Manager Robert Volkmann.
The restaurant has lined up a three-way liquor license for Highland, DeGuilio-Fox said.
"They'll be serving mixed cocktails, wine and beer," she said. "We're very pleased. It is a lovely family restaurant with a good product. It's a good consistent product."
Owned by Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden also has locations in Lansing, Michigan City and Hobart at the Southlake Mall. Olive Garden spokespeople have previously squelched locally circulated rumors that the Hobart location is one of the busiest in the country.
Olive Garden operates nearly 900 restaurants around the world. It's marketed with slogans like "When you're here, you're family" and "We're all family here" and advertises that it has a cooking institute in Tuscany, Italy. Its lunchtime promotion of unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks has proven especially popular.
DeGuilio-Fox said the chain would do extensive renovations to bring the Old Country Buffet building that was constructed in 1996 up to its contemporary design standards. Old Country Buffet shuttered the eatery at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic last year and it never reopened.
No timeline was available.
"It has a very similar footprint but that building has been closed for quite some time now," DeGuilio-Fox said. "Both the exterior and interior will need work. We assume the construction will take a while."
Other dining options at the 540,932-square-foot outdoor Highland Grove shopping center include Chipotle, Qdoba, MOD Pizza, Potbelly, Wingstop, Burger King, Panda Express and the Target food court.
"This should be a destination," she said. "People will come to town and it will be a place to eat for those working at the Cardinal Campus across the street."
Coming soon
LongHorn Steakhouse, another Darden brand with nearly 500 restaurants, is moving ahead with plans to build a new eatery on Indianapolis in Schererville's new Oak District just south of the old Omni Fitness.
Construction has commenced and a wooden frame is nearly complete on the 5,710-square-foot steakhouse just south of the new Chick-fil-A, where lines of cars have wrapped around the building since it opened, sometimes stretching down the street.
The Texas-themed steakhouse chain plans to invest $2 million to create 184-seat restaurant, Schererville Director of Operations Jim Gorman said.
LongHorn Steakhouse will have a family dining room and a bar with Western decor. The menu includes an array of steaks, including ribeyes, sirloin, filets, T-bones, porterhouses, chop steaks and New York Strips, which can be paired with grilled shrimp and lobster.
Alternative entrees include pork chops, ribs, burgers, chicken, salmon, shrimp and dinner salads. The restaurant also serves appetizers, soups, side salads and desserts like the Chocolate Stampede and a Molten Lava Cake.
It started in 1981 in a former antique store on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. It was reportedly a late-night hangout spot for Atlanta Journal and Constitution columnists Ron Hudspeth and Lewis Grizzard, a popular humorist who wrote more than 20 books.
LongHorn Steakhouse's closest locations are in Hobart, Portage and Oak Lawn.
Closing
In the end of an era, erstwhile retail giant Sears is closing its 50-year-old department store in the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.
It's the last Illinois department store of the company that built the country's largest retail empire and the tallest skyscraper in the world in Chicago in the 1970s — which most locals insist on still calling the Sears Tower regardless of who has naming rights — just because it could.
Sears was co-founded by former Hammond watchmaker Alvah Curtis Roebuck, who skipped town for the big city after heartbreak. Long the largest retailer in the United States until it was surpassed by Walmart, Sears closed its last Northwest Indiana location at the Southlake Mall in Hobart when it filed for bankruptcy in 2019.
Relocating
Big City Cheesesteaks closed its location at 6421 Columbia Ave. by the Menard's in Hammond as it prepares to move to a new location that's now under construction in Munster.
The fast-food restaurant specializes in cheesesteaks, hoagies and Chicagoland fare like gyros, gyro burgers, pizza puffs and deep-fried Polish sausages.
It opened in 2018 and offers takeout and dine-in in a laid-back environment where sports is often playing on the television. It made a name for itself in Hammond with its cheesesteak, buffalo chicken and gyro eggrolls.
For more information, visit bigcitycheesesteaks.com or find the business on Facebook.
Expanding
Chunky's Tacos, a longtime food truck that recently opened a brick-and-mortar location in Valparaiso, is expanding.
The restaurant at 1603 E. Lincolnway is building out a patio to offer al fresco dining.
The Mexican joint offers tacos, bowls, rice, chips and drinks. Tacos come in traditional, Gringo or Chunky-style in which he's heaped with onion, tomato, cilantro, chihuahua cheese and sour cream.
For more information, visit chunkystacos.com or find Chunky's Tacos on Facebook or Instagram.
Open
Over Yonder! Dunes Gift Shop is selling Indiana Dunes-themed goods like metalwork, jewelry, candles, paintings, pennants and clothes on the Dunes Highway.
A co-op of artists and artisans opened the shop last year at 12 U.S. 12 in Beverly Shores. Each member works the register one day a month and keeps 100% of the sales of their items. The plan is to eventually offer art classes.
"It's a cooperative of local artists and makers," Manager Jenifer Krizmanic said. "We basically want to offer locals and visitors dunes-inspired goods. We've got metalsmiths, woodworkers and jewelry designers. I design T-shirts, hoodies and backpacks. We have a full line of dunes wear. We have the super popular Beale Pottery that's a husband-and-wife duo."
Other offerings include artisan soap, like a beach soap that looks like the Lake Michigan coastline, and found objects like beach stones and beach glass.
"We ask artists to create dunes-inspired work," she said. "We don't want to impose limits, but it's a collaboration with the same inspiration."
Krizmanic opened the gift shop during the pandemic because she was returning to the workforce after being a stay-at-home mom.
"I was non-degreed and threw it together," she said. "It was a leap of faith. But when you need to support yourself and your kids, you make grand leaps of faith."
'Always loved the Save the Dunes shop'
Over Yonder! includes a section for the Save the Dunes nonprofit that helped preserve the nearby Indiana Dunes, just a short distance north of the shop.
"Growing up I always loved the Save the Dunes shop," she said. "They closed about 10 years ago. But that was an inspiration, trying to recapture that feeling. It was such a cool, almost underground place with local, homemade, unique items."
Over Yonder! is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. It's also open whenever the open flag hangs outside.
"We have a studio space where some of us come to work," she said. "We throw the opening flag out, which the locals love and know to look for."
For more information, call 219-629-0046 or find Over Yonder! on Facebook and Instagram.
If you would like your business to be included in a future column, email joseph.pete@nwi.com.
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Joseph S. Pete
Business Reporter
Joseph S. Pete is a Lisagor Award-winning business reporter who covers steel, industry, unions, the ports, retail, banking and more. The Indiana University grad has been with The Times since 2013 and blogs about craft beer, culture and the military.
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