Some 18 months after Houston real estate company Moody Rambin acquired a 50% ownership in the retail portion of Towne Center, several significant changes to the tenant mix are in the works.
Dumpsters are visible in the parking lot of the 440,000-square-foot shopping center, and construction crews are clearing out vacant retail spaces to make way for new tenants.
Local developer Steve Keller, who also owns 50% of Towne Center and continues to manage it through his Creekstone Properties, says lease negotiations with at least two major national retailers are under way and one lease should be finalized in early September. He declines to identify the retailers.
“I’m just demolishing the old space in anticipation of new tenants,” he says.
But several Towne Center tenants have been told by property management that Ulta Beauty, an Illinois-based cosmetics and beauty products retailer, will be moving into the space.
Ulta has two other locations in the Capital Region: one at the Mall of Louisiana and one at Keller’s Livingston Parish retail center, Juban Crossing.
Russo Ross owner Chris Russo Blackwood says shopping center management notified her two weeks ago that she had 30 days to relocate from the 1,400-square-foot space her boutique has leased since 2011 at Towne Center to make way for Ulta.
“They did offer us another space, but it wasn’t built out so we decided to move,” says Blackwood, who had been on a month-to-month lease at Towne Center since January.
Russo Ross is relocating to Jefferson Center, a nearby shopping center.
Adlers, the high-end New Orleans-based jeweler, is another Towne Center tenant that has been asked to relocate as part of the tenant reshuffling. Adler’s owner Mickal Adler says negotiations are ongoing but no deal has been finalized.
“We are in negotiations and it is more likely than not that we will relocate to another space in the development,” he says. “We’ve always been accommodating with Steve and he’s always been very accommodating with us.”
—Stephanie Riegel
