Fast-growing Zachary landing another retail center

Developers have plans for a 70,000-square-foot retail center on Main Street in Zachary across from the Walmart Supercenter.

Zachary Mayor David Amrhein declines to identify the developers, and no permits have yet been filed, but he says at least one anchor tenant has been secured. Retail Strategies, a Birmingham, Alabama-based retail consulting firm retained to work on the project, is actively helping to recruit other tenants.

“They won’t let me say yet who it is,” Amrhein says. “But they already have signed leases.”

The planned retail center comes as Zachary is continuing its rapid growth, with three new subdivisions and the mixed-use development Americana under construction. Some 186 new homes were built in the city in 2017, and Amrhein projects more than 200 will be completed in 2018. The city’s population, meanwhile, has grown more than 17% since the 2010 census, from 14,900 to 17,500.

“It has been constant growth,” says Amrhein, who has joined Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome and his counterparts in Baker and Central in lobbying to keep the BREC Baton Rouge Zoo in north Baton Rouge.

Amrhein can’t say when more detailed plans for the retail center will be announced, but added more information will be available in the coming weeks.