New location for Aunt Lou’s

After two years downtown, Aunt Lou’s Soul Food restaurant is moving west to the Town & Country Shopping Center on MacArthur Blvd.

Saturday will be the restaurant’s last day serving customers at its 524 E. Monroe St. location. Aunt Lou’s hopes to be up and running at its new location at 2413 S. MacArthur Blvd., the former home to the Fraternal Order of Eagles Post 437, by late August or early September, according to Corey Dickerson, owner of the restaurant.

The new site will allow Aunt Lou’s to expand its menu and offer customers more of a full-service dining experience, Dickerson said. While the menu at the new location will still offer the traditional soul food offerings currently found at Aunt Lou’s, it will also include new items such as pastas and other fare.

“We have a much bigger menu coming,” Dickerson said. “With this new location, we’ll get to venture out into new things and offer different options for different tastebuds.”

Dickerson said having their own parking lot at the new location also will make it easier for customers to access the restaurant.

Aunt Lou’s announced its upcoming departure from downtown earlier this week on its Facebook page, saying that while the restaurant was relocating to the west side of Springfield, downtown would “always hold a special place in our hearts.”

“We love downtown,” Dickerson said. “We’ve always felt welcomed here. It was just time for us to have another spot where we could grow and do more things we’ve wanted to do.”

The Town & Country Shopping Center was purchased in February by Trent Overhue of Springfield, Missouri. Overhue told Illinois Times in March that he planned to make about $5 million of renovations at the 260,000-square-foot shopping center.

Current tenants at the open-air shopping center, which was built in the early 1960s, include the Illinois State Board of Elections, Dollar Tree, Citi Trends and Underdog Sports & Fanfare. About 65% of Town & Country’s space was vacant as of March.