News Roundup

Council to Revisit Walgreens Issue

Batt’s successor wants a closer look at plans

The Times-Picayune
Saturday, June 10, 2006
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer

Just when it seemed the long-running battle over plans to build a Walgreens drugstore at a heavily trafficked Carrollton corner had finally been settled, an action this week by newly elected Councilwoman Shelley Midura could reignite the conflict.

In a highly unusual move, the New Orleans City Council on Thursday approved a request by Midura to rescind approval by the previous council of plans for the drugstore near the corner of South Claiborne and South Carrollton avenues.

On May 25, at the urging of lame-duck Councilman Jay Batt, the council unanimously approved plans for a 14,700-square-foot Walgreens at the site. Although the store would face Carrollton, it would be built far back in the block, next to Claiborne and near Dublin Street, with a large parking lot in front.

But on Thursday, with Midura having replaced Batt in the District A seat and three other new members on board, the council voted 7-0 to reconsider the previous action and then to defer a decision on Walgreens’ plans until its June 22 meeting.

Midura said she wants a chance to study the issues and meet with all the parties involved in the controversy, which centers around many neighbors’ desire to get a supermarket built in the block. The block formerly contained a Canal Villere grocery and a Rite Aid drugstore, but both closed several years ago.

Justin Schmidt, an attorney for Walgreens, said Friday he was surprised by Midura’s action. But he said he understood her reasons and is optimistic that she will end up supporting plans for both the Walgreens and a Robért Fresh Market proposed for the same block.

The delay “will give her a chance to get up to speed on these two projects,” Schmidt said. “She made it clear in her campaign she wanted the neighbors to be involved in the planning process, and this will give them a further chance to do just that.”

On May 17, three days before the runoff in which Midura defeated Batt, Batt and Marc Robért II, owner of the local grocery chain, announced plans to build a 15,900-square-foot grocery, including a 2,700-square-foot mezzanine, next to the Walgreens.

Many Carrollton residents and neighborhood groups have been pushing for years to get a supermarket built at the site, and Batt promised in his 2002 council campaign to get a grocery built somewhere along South Carrollton, which once had three major supermarkets but now has none.

Walgreens has been trying to build a drugstore in the block since 2000, but the project has been repeatedly thwarted by neighborhood opposition. Some nearby residents have opposed allowing a drugstore at the site at all, wanting to keep the entire tract available for a supermarket. Others said they would accept a drugstore but only with the assurance a grocery also would be built.

In December 2004, Winn-Dixie agreed to build a grocery in the block, but two months later the chain filed for bankruptcy protection, killing those plans. Several other grocery chains looked at the site but decided it was too small for a store to be viable.

Late in 2005, Walgreens decided to make another push to get its plans approved by the city, and the City Planning Commission approved them in February. In April, before the council could act on them, the logjam that had long blocked a grocery was broken when the owner of the property at 2424 S. Carrollton, which is in the same block, agreed to sell it, creating a tract large enough for two new stores. A fire station will remain at the corner of South Carrollton and Nelson Street.

During her campaign Midura called Batt’s last-minute announcement of the Robért Fresh Market “a political stunt” that was “a year late and many dollars short,” but she gave no indication Thursday that she opposes plans for the two stores.

Because a drugstore is permitted at the site under the zoning law, the issue before the council is not whether to allow the store but whether to let Walgreens build it 143 feet back from Carrollton, with a large parking lot between the store and the street. Although a setback of that size is several times larger than allowed by design regulations, the Planning Commission approved it, provided that the developers plant several trees, landscape the parking lot and meet other provisos.

Turning down the setback waiver now probably would kill the project because Walgreens officials have made clear they don’t want to build a store with little or no front parking.

Schmidt, who represents Robért as well as Walgreens, said the drugstore setback is crucial to the grocery as well because it would make the grocery visible to motorists traveling toward Jefferson Parish on Claiborne.

Schmidt said the grocery also will need a waiver from normal design regulations because it too would be built far back from Carrollton, near the corner of Dublin and Nelson, though the main entrance would face Carrollton.

In addition, in a move that could touch off a new controversy, Robért will seek permission to use three vacant lots at Claiborne and Dublin, across Dublin from the planned stores, as parking for its employees. The lots, zoned for residential use, would accommodate 27 parking spaces, Schmidt said.

Midura will meet “in the near future” with officials of the companies involved and with leaders of nearby residential associations, Schmidt said.

“I am optimistic that she will basically approve the same plans” the council approved at Batt’s behest, and “at the end of the day there will be both a Walgreens and a Robért’s on that block,” Schmidt said.