BusinessReport.com

When asked about obstacles to economic development in Mid City, Samuel Sanders, executive director of the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance, immediately says “overpriced property.”

“We have individual owners believing that the wave is coming, with them not realizing that they’re blocking the wave,” Sanders says. Still, the area isn’t without its selling points, and might be “the next best thing” to more-expensive downtown.

Mid City is broadly defined as a thousand-block area bordered by Choctaw Street to the north, Foster Drive to the east, Interstate 10 to the south and Interstate 110 to the west. The Government Street corridor has been getting special attention in the hopes that what is now basically a thoroughfare can be developed into a destination for living, working and shopping.

The “albatross site,” as Sanders describes it, is the Westmoreland Shopping Center at Government Street and Acadian Thruway, a high-traffic, high-visibility location with “all the potential in the world.” The nine-acre property, listed at $6 million, has lost most of its high-profile tenants. Two years ago, a redeveloped shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market fell through.

The Resource Foundation, a nonprofit housing developer, let its purchase option for the property lapse earlier this year, killing plans for a potential mixed-use development. The Legislature has even approved tax incremental financing for the site, but still no takers.

“We feel like that’s the trigger point,” Sanders says. The right project there could create a ripple effect that would spur improvements and development throughout the surrounding area. He says Mid City has a number of empty warehouses suitable to be turned into living or working spaces, but developers who’ve shown interest haven’t acted. He does say that three multimillion-dollar projects are being explored in the area, but didn’t say more.

What new development does occur will be expected to conform to urban design standards set adopted by the Metro Council in May and put into force on Sept. 1 regarding signage, setbacks, landscaping, parking, lighting and the like, which are intended to make the area more pedestrian-friendly. A new building, for example, is supposed to have its parking lot behind or to the side of the main structure.

Local attorney Brett Furr, who purchased the Ogden Park Shopping Center across the street from Westmoreland in January, says the overlay ordinance is a nice concept, although it can’t really be enforced on existing buildings.

“If you look at it on the longer term, that corridor is going to be a very popular destination,” Furr says. His current tenants include Bead It, an H & R Block office, Time Warp and a check-cashing business, and the property has a 6,000-square-foot warehouse that has potential as a restaurant, he says.

Mid City is still much cheaper than downtown, but Government Street for all practical purposes is an extension of downtown, Furr argues. It’s really a question of momentum; once something big happens, at Westmoreland or elsewhere, we’ll “start seeing properties turn over like dominoes,” he says.

Photo by Marissa Frayer

STORES GALORE: The Ogden Park Shopping Center, which was purchased by local attorney Brett Furr in January, features tenants such as Bead It, an H & R Block office, Time Warp and a check-cashing business. The property has a 6,000-square-foot warehouse that has potential as a restaurant.

Jennifer Hall of Tipton Associates, president of the Mid City Merchants Association, can see the Westmoreland Shopping Center through her office window.

“If something were to happen there, it would turn a lot of things around,” she says. “It’s an eyesore, and it’s not functioning as it should.”

Still, she says there’s a lot of hope in the business community. The area has a number of popular restaurants and eclectic shops, quaint, reasonably priced neighborhoods and even its own unofficial art and design district stretching along Government from Jefferson Highway to South 14th Street.

“We remodeled a few years ago to keep up with the area,” says Sonny Calandro, whose father started Calandro’s Supermarket on Government Street in 1941. “We knew we could create revenue here by fixing it up. Everybody’s trying to make a facelift of everything.”

The area has its share of crime, but no more than anywhere else, Calandro says. He says business is picking up, and doesn’t see Westmoreland or other underused properties as holding anything back.

“We’d like to see it developed, but right now it’s not bothering anything,” he says.