The latest addition to Waynesboro is a step, not toward the future, but toward the past.

As early as this time next month, officials could be welcoming a drive-in restaurant to the city's rapidly expanding west end, with work already started on a new Sonic Drive-In that will neighbor both Wal-Mart and the Coyner Park Shopping Center.

A hamburger and root beer type of joint, Sonic is the nation's largest drive-in chain with more than 3,200 sites. The local franchise, which is expected to complete construction late next month, will be owned by the Denver-based Basswood Holdings, a limited liability company that runs 15 other Sonics in the Denver and Richmond areas.

The decision to branch out into Waynesboro may seem like an odd one for a company that has thus far focused on more urban markets, but Basswood owner John Platten said it was a logical step for them.

"I've actually wanted to be there for a long time," he said Tuesday by phone. "Sonic is traditionally, originally, a small-town kind of restaurant. In the 1950s, I garauntee you there was a drive-in in Waynesboro, and everybody loved it. And they still do."

The expansion is part of a larger plan to one day have more than a dozen Sonics within the Central Virginia area, he added, specifying Harrisonburg and Charlottesville as a few of the other sites being eyed.

In Waynesboro, the restaurant will employ around 50 people, most on a part-time or seasonal basis. In light of the fact that the official opening will happen as lower temperatures settle on the area, the moment will likely go uncelebrated, with grand opening festivities instead put off until the busier spring season.

Sonic, which is a by-right development, received its building permit Sept. 20. The sale of its 1.5 acre site right next to the Lucy Lane entrance of Wal-Mart was recorded the day before. That land, one of several outparcels snapped up by Wal-Mart when it first came into the area in 2003, was purchased for $800,500.

Developments that have gone up on other such outparcels include the two small strip malls that border the megastore. Only one of the parcels, located directly across from the future Sonic, still remains vacant.