Projects Along Perkins Road Picking Up Steam

The Advocate
By Chad Calder

Changes long in the works are beginning to take place on a vibrant stretch of Baton Rouge road less than a mile long.

The Perkins Road overpass area, home to a high concentration of local bars, restaurants and goods and service retailers, will see its namesake bridge rehabilitated, it's "anchor" revived (albeit in a different form) and the start of the long-awaited redevelopment of the former Acadian Village shopping center.

--Construction crews will begin work on the former Perkins Road Hardware building in the next few weeks, beginning its transformation into a mixed-use development. It will include a new concept by an undisclosed New Orleans-area restaurant, a local gourmet pizzeria and four apartment units on second and third levels.

Much of the warehouse behind the store will be torn down for parking, though a later phase could turn the remaining 2,000 square feet of the warehouse into retail or office space.

Perkins Road Hardware, an institution for the neighborhood and its retail anchor, caught fire in December 2006 and never reopened. Its owners decided to sell the building to developer Donnie Jarreau.

--The Acme Oyster House is now under construction in the former Acadian Village shopping center at Perkins Road and Acadian Thruway/Stanford Avenue and could open by the end of August.

Jeremy DeBlieux, Acme's director of business development, said the French Quarter institution's fifth and newest location is on schedule to open in late summer. It will seat about 200 diners and be open for lunch and dinner, seven days a week.

A spokesman for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation's real estate development unit, which bought the shopping center in 2004 after it was abandoned by Wal-Mart, said that more tenants could be announced later this year.

--The overpass, built in 1937 when the city-parish line was just over the hill at Virgil and Perkins, could begin an 18-week, $2.5 million rehabilitation by the end of the year. It last had some minor rehabilitation in the late 1970s. The work this time will include redoing the decking under the asphalt, realigning deck panels, replacing bearings, fixing the sidewalks and replacing the southern approach. "The bridge is strong," said city-parish drainage and bridge engineer Jim Ferguson. "It just has some critical deficiencies that need to be addressed, and it needs to be rehabilitated."

A public meeting will be held May 28 to notify the community of the project, 80 percent of which will be funded by the federal government and 20 percent from the state.

--New turn lanes in both directions at each quadrant at the intersection of Perkins and Stanford Avenue/Acadian Thruway are part of the city-parish's Green Light Initiative. The $8.5 million effort, which will include a slight widening of the right-of-way and some new curb cuts, is listed on the city-parish's Web site, though a representative for the program was unavailable for comment.

Taken from Perks Coffee House above the overpass down to Acadian/Stanford, the stretch of road is a local who's who of retail categories all but killed off in other areas by national chains over the last two decades.

Its grocery store, sporting And, of course, until about 18 months ago, there was a local hardware store there, too.

All serve a diverse stable of neighborhoods that include Old South Baton Rouge, the Garden District, Southdowns, Hundred Oaks and the houses on the LSU lakes.

To Lillie Petit Gallagher, who lives on nearby East Lakeshore Drive, that stretch of Perkins Road "is Baton Rouge's Magazine Street."

"It's not a cookie cutter-looking neighborhood, it's a diverse neighborhood."

And like many there, she's hoping to see Donnie Jarreau Cos. retain as much of the old hardware building's character as possible.

"It just gives (the strip) a wonderful ambience that you can't get in an area where there's been an attempt to make all the buildings look different," she said, describing the "faux" character of many newer mixed-use developments.

Bill Bonnette, one of the owners of Bolton Health Mart, said many customers have mentioned how much they missed having the hardware store there.

"They really do miss that," he said. "We didn't know how much we missed it until it was gone."

Bonnette said he'd like to see another hardware store and noted that the area is already flush with restaurants; still, he is just glad to see the building put back to use.

Gallagher said she has faith that Jarreau will honor assurances he's made to redevelop the property with the rest of the neighborhood in mind.

Chad Ortte, a broker with Jarreau's development company, concurred the redevelopment will be keeping as much of the building as possible and try to retain some of the aesthetic elements of the hardware store.

He said there has been no final decision on a name, but the company formed to redevelop the property is Perkins Renaissance Development and what they come up with will likely "be something that keeps the memory of it being a hardware store."

At the southern end of the strip, long-awaited changes are beginning to take shape, with the Acme Oyster House construction as the beginning of a redesigned Acadian Village.

Commercial Properties in 2004 bought the property - minus the Shell Station at the front of the property and the building that sits on the corner of Acadian and Perkins. The company held meetings to allow for public input in the center's redevelopment, but other than Elio Marcello's Wine Warehouse briefly occupying the former Books-A-Million shop and the occasional film production using the former Wal-Mart, there has been no activity.

Baton Rouge Area Foundation spokesman Mukul Verma said the foundation's for-profit development unit, Commercial Properties Development Corp., has had to redesign the project because of the rising cost of construction materials.

He said Commercial Properties will be mindful of what the neighborhood's stakeholders said they wanted. He added that despite the change of plans, the project could still include residential development.

Verma said Commercial Properties is in discussions with several other potential tenants, and that the development could end up being predominantly local, which would complement the retail mix up the street.

"We do expect a mix of tenants that includes restaurants and conventional, smaller boutique shops," he said.

DeBlieux said Acme likes the location's visibility and said the access to LSU, the interstate, the Perkins Road Overpass area and its surrounding neighborhood make it the ideal location.

"We've been looking at Baton Rouge for quite some time," DeBlieux said. "We were waiting for the best location we could find, and we think Acadian and Perkins is just a perfect location."

Verma said the development is also supportive of the Green Light Initiative's plans to improve the intersection and the streetscape.

Ortte said he'd ultimately like to see streetscape improvements, including sidewalks, lighting and benches, all along the Perkins Road Overpass area, possibly through the creation of an overlay district.

Overlay districts are a set of compulsory and voluntary design standards

Office Space Vacant Land Retail Space Investment Property Residential All Properties