Southdowns Shopping Center on Perkins Road will be getting a facelift over the next 90 days, with improvements centered on the development’s lighting and parking lot.
Owner Donnie Jarreau, who spent $2 million renovating the 55-year-old center after acquiring it in 2006, says the upgrades are part of the routine maintenance that shopping centers require every few years.
“This is a center that takes care of itself, but you have to breathe life into your properties if you want to keep your tenants in there,” says Jarreau.
Jarreau estimates the cost of the facelift will be about $300,000 and will include laying new asphalt in the parking lot, installing new lighting and repainting the exterior of the building.
The 60,000-square-foot Southdowns Shopping Center currently has several vacancies, including Thai Kitchen restaurant, which recently moved about a mile away to Concord Avenue. Monochrome and Jeannie Frey Rhodes, a photography business, both relocated late last year to 1010 Nicholson Drive. Smoothie King is also planning to move down the street later this year to Acadian-Perkins Plaza.
Jarreau says he has a signed lease with an as-yet undisclosed restaurant tenant for the Thai Kitchen space, and letters of intent from potential tenants for the other three spaces.
“Within 30 days we’ll be 100 percent leased,” he says.
—Stephanie Riegel
