Walk-On’s Enterprises has acquired the Co-Op Bookstore in the Southgate Shopping Center on Burbank Drive and plans to redevelop the building into its new corporate headquarters.
In a deal that closed this afternoon, the parent company of Walk-On’s Bistreaux & Bar acquired the 28,000-square-foot building from Co-Op’s longtime owners, the Prescott family, for $2.7 million.
The building is just yards from Walk-On’s flagship location, also in the Southgate Shopping Center, and will make “an ideal headquarters” site for the rapidly growing company, says Walk-On’s Founder and CEO Brandon Landry.
“Co-Op Bookstore has been an institution in this community for many years and we hate to see them go,” Landry says. “But this is a great opportunity for us in a really cool building.”
The building housing Co-Op, which moved to that location in early 2004 just a few months after the neighboring Walk-On’s restaurant, had been on the market for months. In July, Co-Op owner Bob Prescott told Daily Report he and his brother had decided to close the store because they wanted to retire “and no one is buying books anymore.”
Though the building is in good shape, Walk-On’s plans to spend an estimated $500,000 renovating it and reconfiguring some of the open space. Plans call for installing a test kitchen and for constructing a miniaturized Walk-On’s restaurant that can be used for training. The new headquarters will also be tricked out with considerable play spaces—a basketball court with bleachers, which can double as meeting space, an oversized slide, a golf simulator, pool tables, shuffleboard and a grass turf area that will simulate Walk-On’s beer garden.
“There is a time to get serious and take care of business,” Landry says. “But we like to have fun.”
Landry concedes the space is larger than Walk-On’s, and its 27 corporate employees, actually needs at this point. But the fast-growing company, with system-wide revenues of $100 million, has outgrown its existing headquarters at 232 Third Street downtown.
In 2017, Walk-On’s doubled the number of restaurants it has around the region, which will number 17 by the end of the year. In 2018, it plans to double its size again, with 18 more openings.
Co-Op, which opened in 1933 and was originally located on Chimes Street, will remain open until some time in December, Prescott says. Landry hopes to move into the building by late January or February.
—Stephanie Riegel
