Work on Mid-City Market is slated to begin

The last dead zone along an otherwise bustling North Carrollton Avenue commercial strip is about to stir to life. After closing on financing and land acquisition this month, Stirling Properties officials say they are poised to green light construction on the Mid-City Market, a Winn-Dixie-anchored shopping center that will include a mix of smaller retail outlets.

Workers are scheduled to start prepping the site in the 300 and 400 blocks of North Carrollton as early as Friday, said Townsend Underhill, vice president of development for Stirling. He said demolition should commence next week on the dormant Bohn Ford dealership building, which will be replaced by the planned 53,000-square-foot supermarket.

Underhill said the $38 million project is set to open in about a year. To date, about 80 percent of the 107,000 square feet of space at the site has been leased.

In addition to Winn-Dixie, businesses that have signed on as tenants are Office Depot, Neighborhood Pet Market by Jefferson Feed, Felipe's Taqueria, Pinkberry frozen yogurt, Five Guys burgers and fries and Pei Wei Asian diner.

Five of the signed tenants will be housed in three new buildings that will front on North Carrollton Avenue. A renovation is planned for the former Harry's Ace Hardware building, which will be home to Office Depot and Jefferson Feed.

Underhill said negotiations continue with four other retailers.

When fully operational, the development is projected to generate more than $60 million in annual retail sales. Underhill said the project will create about 365 permanent jobs and employ 275 construction workers.

The supermarket will be modeled after the Winn-Dixie store on Louisiana 21 in Covington, which opened in February 2010 as a national prototype for the Jacksonville, Fla., company.

Like the north shore location, the new store will have stained concrete floors, high ceilings, soft lighting and a 30-foot open-air covered entryway with produce displayed farmers-market-style in open boxes. The new store also will offer a yogurt bar, olive bar, salad bar, wing bar and a seafood case that's about twice the size of a regular store's, as well as nuts and dried fruit sold by the pound.

The grocery will be set at the back of the Bohn Ford site.

In recent months, the development team and City Hall haggled over a design detail that threatened to delay the start of construction.

Winn-Dixie officials wanted a two-way crossing of the proposed Lafitte Greenway to allow customer access to an adjacent, overflow parking lot. Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration and advocates of the 3-mile-long park opposed the idea.

In the end, the city and the developer agreed to a one-way crossing.

"We reached a solution to allow the development to go forward while still preserving the integrity of the greenway," said Aimee Quirk, Landrieu's economic development chief.

As part of the compromise, the developer agreed to pick up the tab for safety features, including speed bumps and signage, and some landscaping. Quirk said the city also reserves the right to close the crossing if it is deemed a safety risk down the road.

Construction is scheduled to begin in the fall on the $7 million Lafitte Greenway, which will connect Armstrong Park on the edge of the French Quarter to Canal Boulevard where Lakeview meets Mid-City. Plans call for the project to be finished in the spring of 2014.

Mid-City Market's amenities will include terraced outdoor seating and pedestrian plazas, benches, bike racks, trellises and landscaping throughout to complement the greenway.

The stretch of North Carrollton between Canal Street and Orleans Avenue has rebounded since Hurricane Katrina, with a bank and other small businesses joining several new restaurants and a few established eateries that reopened at their old locations.

The Mid-City Market site is the only dormant tract along the strip. Winn-Dixie had a Mid-City location before the storm, but the site became a Home Depot after Katrina.

City Councilwoman Susan Guidry, who represents the area, said the shopping center and linear park represent "exciting new opportunities" for the neighborhood.

"This has the potential to create a premier destination shopping experience that is easily accessible by car, bike, streetcar and walking through the Mid-City neighborhood," Guidry said.

In the past, Guidry has commended Stirling officials for working with the Carrollton Design Review Committee, a citizens' group that advises City Hall on commercial development in the area.

The new supermarket will be directly across the street from Rouses. Before Katrina, there were three grocery stores in the area: Winn-Dixie; Sav-A-Center, which was bought out by Rouses in 2007; and a Robert Fresh Market at the corner of Canal and Carrollton, which is now a Walgreens.

Frank Donze can be reached at fdonze@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3328.

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Work on Mid-City Market is slated to begin