The owners of the Broadmoor Village Shopping Center are nearing completion of a new 7,500-square-foot strip center at the intersection of Florida Boulevard and Cora Drive, adjacent to their 80,000-square-foot shopping center, and have signed a lease with their first tenant—Wingstop chicken wings restaurant.
Construction began late last year on the retail strip, which is located on the cleared site of a former gas station, and should be finished in the next few weeks, according to Austin Earhart with Beau Box Commercial Real Estate, the leasing agent for the property.
Wingstop, which has leased the largest of the strip center’s six retail spaces, is scheduled to open sometime this summer. The chain has two other locations in Baton Rouge, as well as locations in Central, Zachary and Gonzales.
The completion of the strip center is the latest feather in the cap of the Broadmoor Village Shopping Center’s New Orleans-based owners, Clark Heebe and Brett Davis. The partners bought the 21-acre site on which the shopping center sits in 2010 for $1.5 million, and have spent the past six years redeveloping the center and upgrading the parking, lighting and landscaping.
In 2014, they leased a 28,000-square-foot space in the center to Hi Nabor supermarket, which needed a new home after losing its longtime space in the Drusilla Village Shopping Center, and also inked a deal with Planet Fitness. Earhart says both tenants have far exceeded expectations.
“The Hi Nabor was a major home run out of the park,” he says. “No one had any idea it would do that well, and the Planet Fitness has done really well there, too.”
Earhart says he has letters of intent from several other potential tenants to fill remaining space in the shopping center, and is negotiating with two national retailers.
“It’s really been interesting to watch the changes over the past few years,” Earhart says. “People don’t realize how many people live in Broadmoor and Sherwood Forest and can access that center without having to cross a major intersection so it’s just done well. It’s got good bones, tons of people, tons of traffic. It’s taken some time, but it’s way better than it was.”
—Stephanie Riegel
