Vivid Ink hopes to be in former Circuit City building by end of the year

Vivid Ink Graphics, which purchased the long-vacant Circuit City building for $1 million late last year, expects to move into the newly renovated building by the end of 2014, says president and owner Stephen St. Cyr. The graphics company recently filed a plan review application with the city-parish Department of Public Works to remodel the 31,000-square-foot building at Airline Highway and Florida Boulevard for $1.1 million. St. Cyr says the company has finished the pre-construction work—demolishing unnecessary walls and removing old carpets—and is now waiting on city-parish approval before beginning renovations, which include reworking the power and air conditioning systems and updating the inside. Vivid Ink currently operates out of 17,000 square feet across three buildings on Cloverland Court. “We’ve grown every year over the past 14 years,” St. Cyr says. “We’re definitely out of space.” The move to Airline Highway will allow the large-format digital printing company to continue to expand its small-format printing services, which it just began offering about a year ago, St. Cyr says. He hopes to make the move over Thanksgiving or Christmas to avoid shutting down operations during standard business hours. Other commercial remodel projects filed with DPW include the $19 million redevelopment of the long-vacant Commerce Building downtown at 333 Laurel St., which was purchased by New Orleans development firm 5thFloor Co. for $1.3 million almost two years ago. The approximately 175,000-square-foot building’s plan review application—filed by 5thFloor’s T.J. Iarocci—includes an almost 11,000-square-foot addition of rooftop commercial space and renovations of existing space into ground floor retail, apartments and a parking garage. Also:
• Best Buy—located adjacent to the Mall of Louisiana in the Bluebonnet Parc Shopping Center, which sold for $21 million to Cincinnati-based Viking Partners late last year—filed a plan review application for interior renovations totaling $1.1 million.
• Overflow Realty LLC submitted an application to renovate an approximately 4,500-square-foot building at 1060 Swan St. into a mixed-use commercial and residential space.
• W.T. Masonry filed an application to expand and renovate its office building at 9203 Amber Drive off of Airline Highway.