BusinessReport.com

Mid City business owners are upset that plans for a high-profile redevelopment of Westmoreland Shopping Center have failed for the second time in as many years.

“We would like to have an answer on why things have fallen through twice,” says Tad Speegle, who co-owns Bead It. “They talk about things like rising construction costs, but that hasn’t stopped Towne Center or Perkins Rowe.”

Marion Cangelosi, who owns Westmoreland, says the property is for sale, and he’s confident a deal will take place. He referred all questions about attempts to sell the property to Kurz & Hebert Commercial Real Estate, which has the listing.

“I don’t even know the people they’ve been dealing with,” Cangelosi says.

Mark Hebert, who has been handling the sale of the property, declined comment.

Westmoreland’s makeover has been a goal of the Mid City Merchants Association and the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance for several years now.

The shopping center at Government Street and Acadian Thruway was once a major retail hub. D.H. Holmes and Cohn-Turner department stores and A&P (later Super Fresh) grocery store were there. But by the late 1990s, all of those retailers had pulled out, either because of financial problems or to follow customers to other parts of the city. Piccadilly Cafeteria, which has been in Westmoreland for nearly 50 years, is the last of the old-guard businesses still in the center.

Liz Walker, owner of the Elizabethan Gallery, says the shopping center has deteriorated into an eyesore that poses a danger to the children who attend nearby schools. “We’re trying to get one citizen to improve an area where thousands of schoolchildren pass every day,” she says.

Walker and many of the Mid City business owners say the reason a deal hasn’t been able to get done has been the high asking price—$6 million for the nine-acre site. That would put the price of the property at $15.30 per square foot. Demolition costs could add an estimated 10% to the price.

That makes the property more expensive than some recent sales, such as the 10.5 acres on Jefferson Highway, near Towne Center, which sold last fall for $6.16 million, or about $13.50 a square foot, to a group of Houston developers who are building a luxury apartment complex there.

“It’s hard for one retailer to take over that much land,” says Samuel Sanders, executive director of the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance. Sanders says the best bet for Westmoreland is for one developer to buy the site, then sell off portions for mixed-use developments, bringing in retailers, offices, restaurants and mixed-income housing. “That spreads the risk,” he says.

The most recent redevelopment plan featured all of those components. The Resource Foundation, a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit housing developer, had planned on building 306 condominiums and townhomes on the site, along with office/retail and parking spots. Rising construction costs caused the foundation to let its purchase option lapse on March 31.

Two years earlier, a deal for Myers Brothers Properties to buy the shopping center fell through. Meyers Brothers, which developed the Wal-Mart Supercenter on College Drive, had planned on building a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on the site and 53,000 square feet of retail. Officials with Myers Brothers say the project didn’t happen because the company realized it wouldn’t be a good business deal.

Sanders says he hasn’t spoken to Cangelosi recently, but he understands the sale price for the land is firm. “There’s not a whole lot more we can do,” he says.

Despite the near-misses, the property is still drawing interest from potential buyers.

Cangelosi wouldn’t comment on the complaints from Mid City business owners about the property, citing recent health problems. “I don’t want to get into all that,” he says.

Sanders says he hopes some developer will realize the potential for Westmoreland, which sits in the middle of a high traffic area, near three high schools and Baton Rouge Community College. Just east of the shopping center, there’s an arts and restaurant district that features such hotspots as Superior Grill and Bistro Byronz. Plans are also in the works to build a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in that area, at the site of the old Winn-Dixie store on Government Street behind Superior Grill.

“There really is such a cool mix of things along this street,” says Jennifer Hall of Tipton Associates, the newly elected president of the Mid City Merchants Association. “It would make a huge impact for something nice to happen there.”