Cortana store changes hands, to become for-profit college

The old Service Merchandise/Steve & Barry’s anchor store in Cortana Mall has been sold, and plans are to put a private, for-profit college in the space. VC Baton Rouge, a partnership based out of Ridgeland, Miss., bought the store for $1.25 million in a deal that closed Friday. The seller was Coventry Real Estate Advisors of New York. Virginia College out of Birmingham, Ala., had earlier filed for a building permit with the city-parish to renovate the 63,000-square-foot store. Virginia College has 14 campuses across the South, in cities such as Jackson, Miss., Mobile, Ala., and Greenville, S.C. The school offers diplomas and degrees in a number of fields, such as health care, medical billing and cosmetology. The school still needs regulatory approval from the Louisiana Department of Education and other accrediting agencies. If all goes well, the college envisions enrolling students by mid-summer and starting the first classes Oct. 4, says Don Keith, a spokesman for Education Corporation of America, Virginia College’s parent company. Typically, the school starts off with about 200 students and has enrollment of 1,000 in about a year. Keith says Virginia College will do research on market demand to decide what diploma and degree programs to offer locally. The school will spend between $4 million to $6 million to renovate the space, putting a tenant in a part of the mall that has been vacant since 2009. “We like those big box stores,” says Keith. “They give us a lot of space to build out to our specific needs for classrooms and labs.” Plus, the Cortana space has plenty of safe parking and is close to major traffic routes. —Timothy Boone