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Suburban New Orleans' Slidell, LA to Receive $900 Million Development

9K views 19 replies 10 participants last post by  Sean in New Orleans 
#1 · (Edited)
Glad to see Slidell get this development..similar to projects in Birmingham and Louisville. I don't really go to Slidell that much ( I do a couple of times a year ), it sounds like it is going to be really nice and possibly worthy of destination travel every now and then.

http://www.bayerproperties.com/files/SlidellPitchbook2008.pdf


Retail, office, residential complex planned for Slidell

by Christine Harvey, The Times-Picayune

Saturday February 16, 2008, 9:36 PM

A new retail-office-residential complex planned along Interstate 10 between Fremaux Avenue and Old Spanish Trail in Slidell would be the first such development in the New Orleans area, providing residents with the means to live, work, dine and shop in one central location and setting the stage for Slidell to become a regional retail hub.

Bayer Properties, a Birmingham, Ala., company that is developing the 400-acre site with local businessman Robert Levis, recently unveiled a site plan for the project's initial phase that illustrates how the complex would take shape. The development will be in stark contrast to the traditional shopping mall, instead providing a city-within-a-city setting where residents can stroll in the fresh air as they shop, then catch dinner and a movie without having to move their car.

Retail businesses, which will dominate the area closest to Fremaux and I-10, will comprise two department stores, including a Dillard's; two other anchor stores; and numerous national specialty stores, said Jeffrey Bayer, a principal with the company and its founder.

The site also will contain a movie theater, a 150-room hotel, several restaurants and 300 apartments, and as the development continues to unfold, the residential units eventually will number as many as 1,300, Bayer said.

The Summit Fremaux, as the projected $900 million development is known, should break ground by early May, with the initial phase complete by spring 2010, Bayer said. The State Bond Commission approved $250 million in tax-exempt GO Zone bonds for the project's first phase last October.

City must OK plans

Slidell officials already have granted the developer's request to carve the tract into five parcels to prepare for their development. The tracts range from 20 to 117 acres, with the smallest tract to be used as an S-shaped road connecting Fremaux Avenue and Old Spanish Trail.

The developer next must submit a conceptual plan for the city's review, as well as plans for the infrastructure, said Tim Jackson, the city's planning director. The Planning Commission will also need to approve plans to subdivide the property when it comes time to build on individual lots, he said.

Otherwise, no significant hurdles remain before construction starts, unlike the brouhaha that surrounded the plans for the Colonial Pinnacle at Nord du Lac development planned along Interstate 12 near Louisiana 21 near Covington. There, neighbors opposed the developer's plans to include a Wal-Mart and Sam's Club as part of the development, sued Colonial Properties Trust to keep them out and forced an out-of-court settlement that accomplished their goal.

At the open-air Fremaux development, people will be able to walk from building to building and store to store, and from home to work, or to their hotel from dinner. Bayer said he expects people from throughout the region to make the development a destination.

"What we have here is a new palette," Bayer said, noting that the development will be built on untouched land and not as an urban in-fill project. "(What we have) coming out of the ground will be so new and fresh."

Katrina was a spur

Until Hurricane Katrina, Bayer had little interest in building a mixed-use lifestyle-oriented development in Slidell. He said Levis contacted him about four years ago to partner on a such a project, but market research indicated that the area wasn't ready for a Summit.

Bayer said he agreed to partner on a smaller project at the site, then the storm forced him to rethink the plan. At first he thought he would scrap the whole idea until the market rebounded, but then retailers began looking for places to relocate after Katrina, he said.

In addition, the area's population grew in two months in what normally would have taken five years, Bayer said. With the University of New Orleans fast-tracking its plans to build a technology park at the site after losing its facility in Slidell, Bayer decided the time had come for a new Summit in the city and started putting a plan together.

And in the meantime, a new I-10 interchange at Fremaux began construction and is expected to be complete by the summer, transportation officials said Friday. The exit will alleviate traffic congestion along Gause Boulevard and provide direct access to the Summit.

Bayer, who has built similar Summit developments in Birmingham, Ala.; Reno, Nev.; and Louisville, Ky., said the complex will prove to be an entire community within a larger metropolitan area.

Since it opened in 1997, the company's flagship property in Birmingham has become that capital city's largest source of sales tax revenue, said Mickey Gee, a marketing professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and local retail expert. He said Bayer Properties is a first-class company with the ability to attract top-notch retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue.

Gee said the Birmingham development has stores that are unique to the community and create a "cross-shopping" experience. In other words, customers want to visit more than one store when they come to the Summit, which Gee called a true test of a retail venue.

He noted that no enclosed shopping malls are under construction anywhere in the United States right now, a testament to the popularity in recent years of the open-air center.

Nord du Lac, a similar project with an open-air feel, will break ground next month, though it will not have residential and office components. The development will have 1 million square feet of retail space and should be open by October 2009, said Richard Yeilding, senior vice president at Colonial Properties Trust, which is building the development.

The development likely will draw from a comparable tenant pool as the Summit Fremaux. Though no tenants have been announced officially, Yeilding has estimated that only 15 percent of the 110 to 115 tenants in the center will be businesses already operating in St. Tammany.

Growth to be in phases

The Summit Fremaux will be built in phases, to accommodate growth as needed, Bayer said. Later phases are slated to include the additional residential units and office space, and the possibility exists that a medical complex could locate at the site, Bayer said.

In time, the center is expected to contain 1 million square feet of retail space for stores and restaurants, 500,000 square feet of medical facilities and up to 325,000 square feet of commercial office space, in addition to the aforementioned single and multifamily homes.

The site also will house the 350,000-square-foot UNO Research and Technology Park, as Levis has donated 25 acres near Fremaux for the project. The park would be similar to that already on the New Orleans lakefront, though plans for the Slidell facility include classes focusing on technological issues for future job needs at Stennis Space Center in nearby Hancock County, Miss., and at Lockheed Martin's Michoud Assembly Center in eastern New Orleans.

Slidell Mayor Ben Morris hailed the project as one of the most exciting in the state right now. He said the Summit name is synonymous with success and hopes the multiuse development keeps shoppers in Slidell rather than spending their money on the south shore.

Economic impact seen

Local economic development leaders think so, too. James Hartman, spokesman for the St. Tammany Economic Development Foundation, said the project's impact on the parish's economy will be tremendous and long-term.

He cited the 5,000 permanent full- and part-time jobs that the development is expected to bring, along with the 3,000 construction jobs it will create in the interim. In addition, the project will be a great benefit for the local government agencies in terms of increased tax revenue, Hartman said.

Though the flagship Summit in Birmingham has higher-end stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma, it didn't start out that way, and neither will the Summit Fremaux, Bayer said. First, the development will include stores that the market needs now, then expand over time.

Ten years later, the Summit Birmingham has added new stores such as Anthropologie, Sephora and Apple, and Bayer said the key to its success has been continually editing the tenant mix to remain a dominant fashion venue.

He declined to name potential tenants at the Slidell center, but the company's marketing materials tout the planned presence of a Dillard's department store and an unnamed bookstore. Barnes & Noble stores are at the Summit locations in Birmingham and Louisville.

Bayer expects that the Fremaux location will evolve over time and that it will include stores not yet in the metropolitan marketplace.

Christine Harvey can be reached at charvey@timespicayune.com or (985) 645-2853.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/retail_office_residential_comp.html
 
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#6 ·
Birmingham already has one. It's on 280 in Vestavia, if I remember correctly.
 
#5 ·
I've only been to the Summit in B'ham a couple of times. But a development like that can only be good for NO. One correction to the article reprinted above is that B'ham isn't the capital of AL...
 
#8 ·
The Summit sucks in your opinion. I disagree. You might think your city has something better, but the people in B'ham don't live in Greenville, so it doesn't matter. Yes, I'd rather see less asphalt, but we're talking about suburban America. Asphalt is a fact of life.
 
#9 ·
This is going to be a fantastic addition to the New Orleans area and huge tax boost for the city of Slidell. Right now...we have Northshore Square Mall serving the area. It's a nice...but outdated mall. I do not see it surviving well unless it does some updating after this new development is built. I see that the Dillard's currently at Northshore Square will be moving to the new Fremaux Ave. development.
 
#10 ·
Based on that site plan, MPTC looks like a surly approximation of a lifestyle center, anchored and tenanted with questionable C and D list retailers. Didn't CompUSA go out of business? The developer was unable to attract quality merchants? Alas, much like The Summit it is depressingly surrounded in a sea of parking.
 
#12 ·
Everything to the right of Regal Cinemas including the Sports Authority and Costco are already built. :eek:hno: The CompUSA there now will close in a month or two. Tenants for lifestyle center portion yet to be built include Apple, Cheesecake Factory, Trader Joes, Z Gallerie, and many others.
 
#11 ·
^^I was thinking the same thing. I've been to The Summit before and while it's nothing more than a very nice strip shopping center, at least it was able to attract some A and B level retailers. I'm not impressed at all with MPTC. While it is a more sustainable design, the quality of tenants that were attracted to it leave much to be desired (with plenty of parking lots surrounding it as well).

Hopefully, this new development in Slidell will attract a higher class of retailers, though I'm not convinced Slidell can match the purchasing power and income levels that surround The Summit. Perhaps these developers should have looked for land closer towards Mandeville/Covington.
 
#14 ·
^^Yeah, I saw that. Until I see Apple, Z Gallerie, Trader Joe's, P.F. Changs, etc open there, I'm going to maintain that it just hasn't attracted anything more than one would expect to find in a typical suburban shopping center.

BTW, an Old Navy, Target, Costco, and Best Buy don't earn you points. Hopefully this new development in Slidell will aim higher.
 
#15 ·
:eek:hno: We already have a PF Changs in Greenville: http://www.crosland.com/retail/properties/greenridge/ I guarantee you it will have those items mentioned. Trader Joes? What do you think the gourmet grocery is? Too small to be Whole Foods Market which is by the way located less than a mile up the street. Apple is the 4,000sf electronics dealer and Cheesecake Factory is Restaurant A listed on the site plan. No, it's not going to include a Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, etc. Greenville is too small of a market for that but it will include other things that our metro area is big enough to support.
 
#16 ·
I'm hoping we get a Barnes & Noble or a Borders as well as a Macy's and a Kohls. We don't have any of that right now.

Colonial Properties is currently building a huge 1,000,000 square foot Lifestyle Center called Nor Du Lac over in Covington, so the western half of the parish is covered. Hammond is also getting a new lifestyle center where the old Hammond Square Mall used to be. This new center will be the main draw for the eastern half of the parish as well as people in Bay St. Louis and Picayune. There is a big new power center being built where the old Lake Forest Plaza Mall was in New Orleans East, so I think that covers NOE and Chalmette's shopping options. The Lowe's is about halfway done at that site.

I'm just glad that our shopping options are finally expanding down here. There really aren't very many national chains in SE Louisiana or Coastal Mississippi. Gulfport doesn't even have a Target...which I find amazing for a metro of 400,000.
 
#17 ·
If the demographics are strong, then Bayer's latest Summit development will have no difficulties attracting the higher end specialty tenants and will probably be the first destination for Macys, Dillards and other interested department store anchors. Colonial's Nor Du Lac will attract the more accessible 'regular' retailers such as the various Gap formats, Charlotte Russe and American Eagle Outfitters along with a couple of tenants that couldn't lease space in Bayer's development. While, it is good to see new retail development and re-development of those aging enclosed regional malls in SE Louisiana, one has to wonder about the significantly negative impact this will have on the tax base of New Orleans/ Orleans Parish?
 
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