South Charleston's Park Place added its first business Thursday with the opening of the new Chick-fil-A.

The new restaurant along MacCorkle Avenue was already a popular attraction Thursday morning as people lined up as early as 5:30 a.m. to be among the first customers.

“I’ve seen this property sit vacant all this time, and from the minute the ground breaking happened I was excited about this opening,” Nick McKinney, the first person in line, said. “I talked all about being the first one here and I wanted to make it happen.”

Tom Minturn, the owner of the restaurant, said this has been a work in progress for about five years.

To celebrate the opening, Chick-fil-A donated $25,000 to Mountaineer Food Bank and gave 100 South Charleston first responders 52 free meals for the year.