BATON ROUGE BUSINESS REPORT
RYAN BROUSSARD
OCTOBER 13, 2015
Rouses Enterprises received the permit Friday for its long-awaited Rouses grocery store in the Long Farm development underway on Airline Highway, clearing the way for construction to begin on the 53,545-square-foot supermarket in the traditional neighborhood development.
Construction is expected to cost $8.46 million and will include 4,300 square feet of outside seating space, according to the permit. Rouses purchased 4.8 acres of land in Long Farm in 2014 for an undisclosed price.
Long Farm developers first announced in 2013 that Rouses Supermarket would anchor the first retail phase of the massive 237-acre TND bordered by Airline Highway, Barringer Foreman Road and the Antioch Road Extension on property once owned by developer Russell Mosely’s grandfather, the late U.S. Sen. Russell Long.
Attempts to reach Mosely or Rouses officials for comment on the construction timeline before today’s afternoon deadline were unsuccessful.
The Houma-based supermarket chain began in 1960 and has more than 6,000 employees working in 50 stores across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. This will be the second Rouses second location in the Baton Rouge metro area with the first in Juban Crossing in Livingston Parish.
Zaxby’s, the Athens, Georgia-based restaurant chain known for fried chicken strips and wings, filed permits last month to build a 4,100-square-foot location adjacent to the supermarket. Besides Rouses and Zaxby’s, about 76,000 square feet of retail space is available at Long Farm.
For the residential portion of Long Farm, national home-builder DR Horton has built and sold 30 homes, while local builders are in various stages of development in other lots. Scott Bardwell, owner of Bardwell Homes, says they just began construction on their first home after encountering some snags after purchasing 26 lots in May. Four of the first six planned homes have been pre-sold, Bardwell says.
Atlanta-based ECI Group has also signed on to build a 276-unit apartment complex on 12 acres of land on the eastern portion of Long Farm and about 200 feet off Antioch Road.