Ask most Baton Rouge natives about the 30,000-square-foot vacant space fronting Interstate 10 in the Esplanade Mall, and they will tell you it has been empty for about as long as they can remember.
When Esplanade was built at the intersection of Corporate Boulevard and College Drive back in the 1970s, it was an open-air shopping center called Corporate Square. The large anchor space that has for years sat vacant with a “For Lease” sign on it had originally housed I.H. Rubenstein’s, a high-end department store for women.
But the economic crash of the 1980s saw the bankruptcies of both I.H. Rubenstein’s and Corporate Square. In June 1993, Rick Hartley and David Vey bought the shopping center for $3.5 million, and it was renamed. Mark Hebert of Kurz & Hebert Commercial Real Estate says the former I.H. Rubenstein’s space has since housed a service center for Chase Bank and FEMA, but adds that it has, for the most part—and surprisingly—remained empty.
“You can’t ask for better exposure in Baton Rouge,” Hebert says. “It’s truly the center of commerce in the city. It’s a shame that it’s just sitting there.”
Austin Earhart of Beau Box Real Estate agrees that the property is in a prime location, but says he isn’t surprised that it has sat vacant for so long.
“Honestly, it’s a great piece of property,” he acknowledges. “But knowing the big picture, [the vacancy is] not that surprising. It’s economics. Most of your tenants that can take that much space are just not huge rent payers.”
The owners of Esplanade—Hartley and Vey—did not return calls or emails for comment. Earhart says the last time he spoke with them about the property they were asking for rental rates around $23 per square foot. That’s relatively high compared to a pair of other deals Earhart recently closed for comparably sized spaces on Siegen Lane, which went for about $10 a square foot. A lack of parking also seems to be an obstacle for Esplanade, Earhart says, because most of the tenants—like Sullivan’s, Hooters, Clicks and The Melting Pot—are heavy parking users.
Earhart says Hartley and Vey are contemplating several different options for the space, one of which would be to demolish the space and rebuild it as smaller suites, which he says would be easier to lease.
Hebert has a different idea in mind. Since the neighboring space in Esplanade is also now vacant, following the late-August closure of the Fox and Hound bar—which occupied approximately 11,500 square feet—Hebert says the best option may be to try to attract a large destination tenant.
“Let’s face it, small retail struggles when you don’t have a traffic generator. I think it would be a great boutique Home Depot kind of use,” Hebert says. “Something that would drive business there daily and that the center of Baton Rouge could benefit by, because that use doesn’t really exist there in that location.”
