The developers of The River House have inked a deal with a destination restaurant that will be the anchor tenant of their mixed-use development on Nicholson Drive near downtown.
Marc Blumberg declines to identify the restaurant, one of at least two tenants that he says has signed a lease in the development’s 16,000-square-foot retail space. But he plans to make a major announcement soon.
“We don’t want to say too much right now, but you need a destination type of restaurant there,” he says. “It’s definitely a destination restaurant.”
Meanwhile, work is nearing completion on the two multifamily buildings in the development. Each building has two sections that together total 224 units. Blumberg expects the first units, about a quarter of the total, to be completed and ready for occupancy in June.
A 34,000-square-foot, three-story office building is already completed, though no tenants have yet leased the space.
“We’re working with a few potential tenants,” he says. “We’re still in the proposal stage.”
The River House, which is located on the site of the old Prince Murat Hotel, has been a long time in the making. It was originally approved by the Planning Commission in 2009, but was delayed because of the recession and, later, a change in the financing plan for the project. Construction began in the fall of 2015.
In the years since Blumberg and his partner in the venture, Manny Organek, began planning The River House, the Nicholson Drive corridor has seen an increase in development. Three buildings on the nearby Water Campus have been completed or are nearing completion, and plans for a fourth are underway.
LSU has begun construction on its huge mixed-use development near the south gates of the campus just two miles away. And plans for a 3.4-mile streetcar along Nicholson Drive and downtown are in the works, though Metro Council members recently deferred a request for funding for the project amid opposition from a coalition of both Democratic and Republican council members hostile to devoting more tax dollars to downtown.
Blumberg is hopeful the project will move forward as planned, but says even if it somehow falls through he’s not worried about the potential effect it might have on the River House.
“We hope it happens and hope it will be great,” he says. “But River House was planned long before the tram was ever part of the mix.”
—Stephanie Riegel
