News Roundup

New Walgreens Under Construction at Canal, Carrollton

The Times-Picayune
Ronette King
July 15, 2009 4:44PM

Developers have released a rendering of the new Walgreens planned for Canal, Carrollton.

By the time Mid-City welcomes the Endymion krewe next year, the neighborhood likely will have a new drugstore to turn to for last-minute parade supplies.

The Walgreens drugstore chain is set to build a store at the corner of Canal Street and Carrollton Avenue, continuing the steady return of retail and basic services to the neighborhood.

In addition, Walgreens has two other stores under construction in the New Orleans suburbs: one in Meraux to replace a store lost to Hurricane Katrina, and an all-new store in Kenner.

“We’ve been very pleased with this market,” said Tiffany Washington, Walgreens spokeswoman. “New Orleans is one of our strongest markets for years, and I think we would consider it one of our most successful.”

New Walgreens locations

All three pending New Orleans area locations will be built according to a prototype the company is using in this market, which calls for about 14,500 square feet of space with a single-lane drive-through pharmacy window.

Early plans call for the Mid-City store to open in mid-January, before the Endymion parade rolls. The drugstore chain wants to be able to serve the parade crowds and also avoid becoming a construction hazard during Carnival season, said Gordon Kolb of GHK Developments Inc. of New Orleans, the developer on the project.

For decades, the busy corner at Canal and Carrollton was anchored by a Canal Villere grocery store, and later a Robert Fresh Market. The Robert Fresh Market never reopened after Hurricane Katrina, and the site has already been demolished and is being prepped for construction.

Meanwhile, a new Walgreens in Kenner is under construction on the site of a former gas station and is expected to open in January.

A third Walgreens is under construction in Meraux and will replace one swept away by Hurricane Katrina. The Meraux store is scheduled to open in October.

The St. Bernard Parish store is the second to open in the parish since Katrina. In the months after Katrina, many retailers were reluctant to return to flood-ravaged areas, but Walgreens plunged in and has been rewarded, said Peter Aamodt, vice president of development for Stirling Properties Inc. of New Orleans, which is developing both the Meraux and Kenner stores.

“A lot of retailers were hesitant to come back, especially to the lower parishes,” Aamodt said. “But Walgreens realized there were good customers there, so they came back very quickly after the storm and it paid off.”

Within the drugstore chain, the St. Bernard store is a legend. Immediately after the storm, Chalmette store was one of the busiest in the chain, Washington said. “So that’s a store that is well-known in the company,” she said.

Ronette King can be reached at rking@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3308.