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40,000-square-foot
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Former Sewell
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grocery store
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‘On behalf of the
city of New Orleans, we appreciate your ability to
take a risk, and
your commitment
to rebuilding neighborhoods,’ Mayor
Mitch Landrieu,
right, tells Donald
Rouse, left, president of Rouses
Markets, during a
press conference
Thursday.
500 feet
THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
—
By Matthew Albright
Business writer
Rouses Markets has purchased the old
Sewell Cadillac building in downtown New
Orleans and will convert the structure into
a 40,000-square-foot grocery.
Donald Rouse, the company’s president, acknowledged that the store will
be unusually large for an urban area,
but he said the property has plenty of
advantages.
Rouse said the store’s size will allow
workers to produce goods to be sold at
other, smaller outlets. “It provides enough
space to prepare for other stores,” he said.
“For example, during king cake season
we can back up our stores on Royal and
everywhere else.”
He also pointed to the building’s
ample parking space and proximity to the
See ROUSES, C-8
PHOTOS By JOHN MCCUSKER / THE TIMES-PICAyUNE
The showroom at the former Sewell Cadillac dealership on Baronne Street will be
transformed into a large urban grocery store after Rouses Markets bought the
building. The new store won’t open for at least another year.
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Advocacy of Louisiana seafood praised
ROUsEs, from C-6
parking space and proximity to the
Central Business District.
The new store, which won’t open for
at least another year, will have 28,000
square feet of food. It will include
space for an in-house bakery and deli
serving chef-prepared meals, handmade sushi, and fresh seafood, boiled
and prepared in-house.
Rouses already operates 37 grocery stores throughout Louisiana and
Mississippi.
Rouses opened its first grocery
store in Houma in 1960, and for
decades, Rouses Supermarkets was
entrenched in the Houma-Thibodaux
area.
In 2007, the company made a major
foray into the New Orleans market by
acquiring all of the local Sav-A-Center
and A&P stores. The move, which
came at a time when many retailers
were still cautious about post-Katrina
New Orleans, doubled the size of
Rouses and transformed it into one of
the largest grocery chains in the area,
along with Winn-Dixie.
Rouse announced his acquisition of
the Sewell Cadillac building during a
news conference Thursday morning
in a parking lot on the site. Several
New Orleans public officials spoke
briefly at the event, including Mayor
Mitch Landrieu; Ron Gardner, chairman of the board of directors at the
New Orleans Downtown Development District; and Councilman-atlarge Arnie Fielkow.
“On behalf of the city of New
Orleans, we appreciate your ability to
take a risk, and your commitment to
rebuilding neighborhoods,” Landrieu
said.
“You may have heard the old adage:
retail follows roofs,” Gardner said.
“They don’t make decisions like this
lightly.”
Gardner said Rouses’ expansion comes as the city’s population
is expanding and restaurants are
cropping up again after Hurricane
Katrina. “It’s not a sprint; it’s a distance race,” he said of New Orleans’
economic growth. He said the new
store is evidence that “we’re on pace
to win it.”
Ewell Smith, executive director of
the Louisiana Seafood Promotion &
Marketing Board, says the company,
known for its seafood, will be a boon
to an industry suffering because of
the oil spill spreading through the
Gulf.
JohN Mccusker / The TiMes-picaYuNe
Donald rouse listen as Mayor Mitch landrieu speaks Thursday. rouse said
the store’s size will let workers make goods for other, smaller outlets.
“Rouses has been one of the strongest advocates of local seafood. To see
them come out and make a statement
like this is a great thing for us,” he
said.
Smith says that “north of I-10, our
message is getting muddled,” meaning some consumers are afraid to
purchase seafood from south Louisiana, despite repeated assurances the
food is safe. Smith says that makes the
new grocery all the more important.
•••••••
Matthew albright can be reached at malbright@
timespicayune.com or 504.826.3399.
Campbell plans to rejuvenate Camden with office park
CAMPBELL’s, from C-7
then, most of the big companies and
more than 40 percent of the population have left.
Even decidedly local institutions
like the city’s newspaper and Catholic
high school have fled over the decades
considering moving too. Its parking
lots were protected by barbed-wire
fences; the neighborhood was full of
abandoned buildings and vacant lots,
some strewn with junked cars.
But in 2007, the Fortune 500 company announced a new plan. It would
stay, expand, and launch the office
park — as long as the state and oth-
to become home to his companies.
They include the retail chain Dr. Denim and the hip-hop-oriented clothes
firm Miskeen Originals. But that plan
didn’t happen. Neither did the idea to
make it a data storage center.
Zaken, who did not return a call
Thursday, has a new concept: Turning
the facility into a marketplace for res-
save the building, which was added
to state and national historic registers when it was threatened about a
decade ago.
Mary Cortes is a teacher at a
school for dropouts who intends to
open a restaurant linens business in a
restored Sears building. She says Zaken’s vision could deliver more jobs for