Work crews will begin bulldozing the former Ruby Tuesday’s location at 5108 Corporate Blvd. in the Esplanade Mall this week, and several potential restaurant tenants are interested in building a new restaurant on the site, according to Jonathan Walker of Maestri-Murrell Commercial Real Estate, which handles leasing for the shopping center.
“We’ve got three potential tenants that have expressed interest, though nothing that we can talk about yet,” says Walker, who took over leasing of the shopping center in May. “Most users would spend just as much retrofitting the old building as they would building a new building.”
Perhaps more importantly, the demolition of the Ruby Tuesday building—which has been vacant since the restaurant closed in early 2014—signals that owners Richard Hartley and David Vey “are ready to start the redevelopment process” at Esplanade Mall, a 104,000-square-foot shopping center that has lost a number of tenants in recent years.
Walker says his firm is also working with several potential tenants to lease the rear portion of the building that faces Interstate 10. In April 2015, a Chase Bank services center that occupied a 14,000-square-foot space facing I-10 was demolished to make way for a new user. Walker says the rear of the building has sat unfinished since then because the owners didn’t want to build anew until they had secured a new tenant.
“They didn’t want to finish the construction until a user dictated what we’re going to do so we’re definitely working on that,” Walker says. “We’re chasing everybody from small local retailer to large big box because we’ve got spaces available from 1,500 square feet all the way up to 40,000 square feet.”
In addition to the Ruby Tuesday’s, which was built on an outparcel, Kaminari Sushi, Red Door Interiors, Fox and Hound, and Subway, among others, have closed in the shopping center in recent years.
Hartley and Vey acquired Esplanade Mall out of bankruptcy in 1993 for $3.5 million.
—Stephanie Riegel
