News of bar and restaurant openings, closings and rebrandings dominated Daily Report headlines this week.
Perkins Road eatery Frankie Marcello’s is closing its doors on Sunday for a rebranding after three years of specializing in Italian, Creole and seafood dishes. The restaurant has been under new ownership since last year, when Philip Lasseigne and Dave and Karen Hayden acquired it from a group of owners. Dave Hayden says the new ownership is now ready to make changes to both the building and the food. The new restaurant will be called Lasseigne’s American Grill, which will serve Louisiana-style dishes prepared with fresh, local ingredients.
“We are making some major changes,” Hayden says. “We are totally redoing the interior.”
As for the restaurant’s offerings, Hayden says he and his partners are bringing in a young chef and that the menu will be “a cross between Sammy’s and Mike Anderson’s, with a healthier flair.”
Also this week, Street Breads owner Josh Priola told Daily Report about his plans to open a second Baton Rouge location at 5454 Bluebonnet Blvd., next to Albasha restaurant in a strip mall near the intersection of Bluebonnet and Interstate 10. Priola says he chose the location, which previously housed an independently owned pharmacy, because “it’s the center of Baton Rouge.”
Priola founded the sandwich shop that focuses on fresh ingredients and homemade breads in Lake Charles five years ago, and brought the concept to Baton Rouge’s Perkins Road Overpass neighborhood in late 2012. Since then, sales at the sandwich shop have been doing very well, says Priola, who plans to open three more locations over the next 18 months.
Meanwhile, over in Mid City, the owners of Radio Bar are planning their next Mid City business venture: a beer garden that will be located about a half mile down Government Street from the popular bar they opened about four years ago.
“It’s going to be a beer garden with a lot of covered patio space outdoors where the community can come to gather and hang out,” says Brian Baiamonte, a photographer for Business Report who also co-owns Radio Bar with Dave Remmetter. “It’s going to be a pretty cool concept.”
Radio Bar manager Kelli Paxton is also going to be a co-owner in the new venture. They submitted an application to the city-parish Planning Commission this week requesting the property at 3808 Government St., which is at the intersection of Steele Boulevard, be rezoned to allow for alcohol sales at the site of the planned beer garden.
Also submitted to the Planning Commission this week were applications for two separate residential projects in the Goodwood Area from designer and developer Mike Hogstrom. The first, Township at Old Goodwood, will be a traditional residential design subdivision of eight single-family homes on a 1.7-acre tract at Lobdell and Lasalle Avenues. Nearby, Hogstrom is also planning to develop a slightly larger residential development of 17 lots on a 3.17-acre tract at Old Hammond Highway and Cove Court. It will be called Overton Walk.
Here’s a rundown of some of the other top stories making headlines in Daily Report this week:
- The latest CityStats survey measuring how Baton Rouge residents feel about their city and quality of life shows, among other things, that concerns about crime are down, support for legalized marijuana is up and a majority of respondents think the city-parish should build and operate a mental health treatment facility. The annual survey, released this week, is conducted on behalf of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which uses the results to guide its civic leadership projects and assists its fund donors in making grants.
- Prescription drug abuse is an increasingly serious problem across the U.S., and Baton Rouge is no exception, according to Terry Davis, resident agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Baton Rouge office. What’s more, prescription drug abuse is leading directly to more usage of heroin, which is less expensive and easier to come by, Davis said in a speech to the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge this week.
- The reorganization of the former East Baton Rouge Parish Department of Public Works into six independent departments is nearly complete, and the leadership of each department should be in place by the end of this month. Consultant Christel Slaughter, whose firm SSA Consultants has been helping the city with the reorganization, says the directors selected to head the six departments are “rock stars”: top-flight administrators from around the country with experience in the public and private sectors.
—Steve Sanoski
