Roughly 10 months after announcing it would replace the since-closed Hi Nabor grocery store in the Drusilla Village Shopping Center, LeBlanc’s Food Stores is putting the final touches on its renovation and expansion of the former Hi Nabor location and preparing for an opening on Tuesday, March 31, at 6 a.m.
The new store will be a LeBlanc’s Frais Marche concept, which emphasizes fresh produce and prepared meal options and side items. LeBlanc’s move into the Drusilla center was cleared last May when Donnie Jarreau Real Estate purchased the center for $10.5 million and announced a $2 million upgrade. LeBlanc’s renovated the former Hi Nabor space from about 19,000 square feet to nearly 35,000 square feet.
“Literally, we retouched everything,” says LeBlanc’s Director of Corporate Communications Brooke LeBlanc Knight. “We completely redid the flooring, the roof and the electrical and mechanical aspects of the building. Pretty much nothing is in its original state. That’s why it took us so long.”
LeBlanc’s was launched in the early 1960s with a single store in Gonzales, and it has since expanded to nine locations, including the forthcoming Drusilla store, which will feature a hot bar with breakfast, lunch and dinner items, a salad bar, olive bar, fresh cut fruit bar, soups, take-and-bake pizzas and sushi, as well as a deli/bakery, meats and seafood. Business hours will be 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week.
Since leaving the Drusilla center, Hi Nabor in November opened a new 28,000-square-foot in the Broadmoor Village Shopping Center.
—Matthew Sigur
