Demolition is scheduled to begin next week on the shopping center in the 700 block of Jefferson Highway that is home to Serop’s Express and previously housed Don Bergeron’s Mid City Market.
Property owner Vasken Kaltakdjian, who also owns the chain of Serop’s restaurants, is demolishing the aging building to make way for a new, 2,300-square-foot building that will house a new Serop’s Express with a drive-thru window.
Kaltakdjian plans to spend around $700,000 on the construction of the new building, not including the new equipment he will buy for the restaurant. That’s about the same amount he spent in 2012, when he acquired the building from its previous owner. Kaltakdjian says tearing down the property and rebuilding a free-standing Serop’s Express with a drive-thru was always part of his plan; he was just waiting for the right opportunity.
“It’s a good thing for Mid City,” he says. “We are ready to get rid of the dry piece of property—no landscaping, no nothing—and this will bring something that is nice to the neighborhood.”
Kaltakdjian estimates Serop’s Express will be closed about four months during the construction. When it reopens in its new space, it will be the seventh Serop’s in the market and the fifth Serop’s Express. It will be one of just two Serop’s Express locations with a drive-thru, however, something Kaltakdjian finds increasingly necessary.
“The two that have drive-thrus do much better than the other ones,” he says. “They generate better business and more income.”
As previously reported by Daily Report, besides Don Bergeron’s Mid City Market, which is relocating to 8200 Jefferson Highway, two other tenants were housed in the building that is to be torn down. They include Capital Heights Veterinary Clinic, which moved to 7662 Goodwood Blvd., and Margo E. Bouanchaud Inc., a gourmet caterer relocating to 2836 Government St.
—Stephanie Riegel
