Officials hit road seeking retailers N.O. team going to convention
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
By Leslie Williams
Times-Picayune
On a mission to lure retailers to hard-hit parts of post-Katrina New Orleans, a group of city officials and business leaders is headed to Las Vegas to meet with thousands of shopping center owners, developers and investors from around the globe.
The four-day spring convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers begins Sunday, and the New Orleans delegation will be attempting to encourage retailers and other trade professionals to take advantage of business opportunities planned for Canal Street, South Claiborne Avenue and in eastern New Orleans, where an outdoor shopping mall with a "Main Street" atmosphere will take the place of the mostly demolished Lake Forest Plaza.
City Councilwoman Stacy Head and Anne Redd, her policy adviser, will be in Vegas attempting to solicit interest in a plan to redevelop Canal Street and transform Claiborne Avenue between Earhart and Napoleon avenues into a shopping corridor with a major grocery store, big-box retailers, smaller national chain stores and small businesses.
"We're putting together marketing materials so that we can show retailers, and developers who partner with particular retailers, what we envision for both Canal Street and Claiborne Avenue," Head said.
"And we hope to show them some of the incentives that a lot of people are not aware of that are available in New Orleans," she said.
Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis and Sherman Copelin, head of the New Orleans East Business Association, will be soliciting retailers for the Renaissance Town Center and other projects east of the Industrial Canal.
Paul Lambert of Lambert Advisory LLC, a Miami planning firm hired by the City Council to produce recovery plans, will network and pitch ideas at the event, which will be attended by at least 42,000 people from the United States and 57 other countries.
The trade association gathering, billed as the 13th-largest convention in North America, brings together practically anyone who has anything to do with the shopping center industry: owners, developers, managers, marketing specialists, investors, lenders, public officials and retailers.
About 365 exhibits of products and services for shopping centers will be on display. In the Leasing Mall area at the convention, thousands will congregate among other exhibitors in buildings temporarily constructed in an expanse larger than several football fields, about 2 million square feet. Organizers of the event consider the Leasing Mall area prime territory for pitching projects and networking.
"For your folks who are going there, it really provides them four days of very intensive deal-making opportunities, meaning it really gives them the opportunity to meet one-on-one with the biggest players within the retail real estate industry, to really give them the opportunity to meet with anybody that they want, or look at opportunities that may exist for them under one roof," said Patrice Duker, a spokeswoman for the trade association. "They don't have to travel to all these places around the country. They just head to the ICSC spring convention and everybody's there."
At the convention, Duker said, "about 25 percent of all shopping center leases for the year are physically signed or the talks begin to bring that retail development to your neighborhood."
Copelin hopes to establish relationships with the "three top firms that either develop shopping malls or represent the heavyweight retailers." He said he hopes to connect owners of the Lake Forest Plaza to the right retail group "so we can get high-quality retailers there."
Most of the Plaza has been razed to make way for the Renaissance Town Center.
In planning sessions for rebuilding eastern New Orleans, "the people said, 'We want quality, quality, quality,' " said Copelin, a friend of banker Ashton Ryan, the Plaza's managing partner. "Women want quality and shopping. They've gone so far as to say, 'I want "X" store,' which means nothing to me, but my wife understands it. If the mall is going to be successful, they're going to have to encourage the kind of regional retailers to come there that will attract quality customers."
Lowe's, which plans to employ 175 workers, already has agreed to build on the former Plaza site. Lowe's Regional Vice President Debbie Hobbs-Singletary has said the home improvement store is expected to open this year. However, construction hasn't started, Karen Cobb, a spokeswoman for the home improvement company, said Friday. Once started, it will take about nine months to complete, she said.
The new outdoor mall, Lambert said, will not be exclusively retail.
Gowri Kailas, majority owner of the mall site, said it probably will have a Main Street feel with some residential units above the shops, popular stores, some offices, restaurants, a limited-service hotel and a movie theater, the to-be-renovated 12-screen Grand Theatre.
Gowri said he will attend the trade association meeting and has set up meetings with retailers who may need from 5,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet.
In the retail industry, you wait to talk about a deal until there's some forward momentum, Lambert said, and that's the case with the Plaza. Homeowners have reinvested in eastern New Orleans post-Katrina, he said. The site is attractive because of its size: more than 80 acres. And there's been a "refocus" on the site and the area around it by the city, Lambert said.
Mayor Ray Nagin and his recovery chief, Ed Blakely, recently designated the mall site and the area encircling it as one of 17 target zones in the city's post-Katrina redevelopment blueprint. The city plans to spend millions to spur private investment in those zones.
Recovery team members Alvin Harrison Jr., manager of resettlement, and Lavon Wright, a community development specialist, will attend the deal-making conference in Las Vegas, said James David Ross II, a city spokesman. They will tout potential business ventures in all of the city's target zones.
And they will draw attention to the many factors that, he said, make the Big Easy ripe for development:
-- There is a market opportunity gap, meaning there are services that are needed that new companies could provide.
-- It is cheaper to do business in Orleans Parish than in many other places because of the incentives provided here.
-- New residential development is occurring within the city of New Orleans.
-- New Orleans offers import/export opportunities as the only city with six Class A intercontinental rail lines that allow travel north, east and west.
-- New Orleans hosts 10 million visitors each year. This is a tremendous market for any retailer.
And there are GO Zone incentives, which allow bonus depreciation for capital projects, employee wage credits and equipment purchase deductions, Ross added. There are 0 percent capital gains taxes and renewal community benefits, which allow for capital depreciation over 10 years, rather than the traditional 39 years.
Redd, Head's policy adviser, said retailers also can expect to receive assistance with land massing through the Office of Recovery Management and with market studies to identify retail needs.
Clear design guidelines also sweeten the pot, she said.
"Developers don't like to come into an area where the rules change," Redd said. "They'll know exactly what they're getting into when they come."
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Leslie Williams can be reached at lwilliams@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3358.