Zoe’s Kitchen is planning its third Baton Rouge location in the burgeoning Highland Park Marketplace retail center at the corner of Highland and Old Perkins roads. The Texas-based chain filed for a building permit earlier this month with the city-parish Department of Public Works to develop a 2,748-square-foot restaurant in the center, which is anchored by Alexander’s Highland Market.
Real estate agent George Kurz, who handles leasing for the center, says the new Zoe’s will be located in an 8,000-square foot outparcel that is, essentially, the second of three development phases planned at Highland Park Marketplace.
“This will be the first part of support retail adjacent to Alexander’s,” says Hebert, who has three additional signed leases for the building with unnamed national retailers.
He describes the tenants as service-type businesses and says he is trying to develop a synergy with retailers that share each other’s tenants but don’t compete.
“The success of the center is all about tenant mix,” he says.
Hebert expects construction on the 8,000-square-foot building to begin in the next two weeks and says it should be completed with all tenants open for business by the third quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, a third building at the shopping center is also on the drawing board. That building will total more than 14,000 square feet and will include a Kean’s Fine Dry Cleaning store, as well as four other retail tenants. Construction on that building is still several months away.
When the entire center is complete, Highland Park Marketplace will total more than 72,000 square feet and will be a development of contiguous buildings that resemble each other in design and scale. Hebert predicts it will be the dominant retail center for the growing, high-end southeast Baton Rouge area.
“Think about what Bocage Village was and is to the Bocage-Jefferson Place-Old Goodwood area,” he says. “That’s what this is going to be to Country Club of Louisiana, Santa Maria, Bluff Road, Highland Road.”
—Stephanie Riegel
