(Above) Interior of Marina City’s new Subway restaurant, on the day before its grand opening. (Click on image to view larger version.)

May 23, 2010 – Marina City’s new Subway opens Monday at 7 a.m. and will not close. The fast-food restaurant will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Owner William Torchia says Subway is trying to get more of its Chicago stores to stay open 24/7 and he believes there is enough late-night activity in the neighborhood to keep the Marina City location open all night.

The new restaurant at 317 North Dearborn will own the late-night Subway market. According to the company’s web site, the next closest Subway, at 447 North State, is only open until midnight Sunday through Thursday and until 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Of five other nearby Subway restaurants, none stay open later than 10 p.m.

From the time the building permit was approved, it took less than two months to transform the long-vacant space at the base of Marina City’s west tower into a Subway restaurant. Much of the work involved connecting plumbing and utilities to the semi-hexagonal unit, which had not been used since 1988, when it was a Dollar Rent-A-Car location.

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