News Roundup

Lowe’s passes hurdle in east N.O.: Store proposed at shuttered mall

The Times-Picayune
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
By Bruce Eggler

Plans for building a Lowe’s home improvement store on part of the site of the closed Lake Forest Plaza mall gained unanimous approval Tuesday from the New Orleans City Planning Commission, but the commission called for some design changes, such as reducing the number of parking spaces.

The final decision is up to the City Council.

Developers unveiled plans last month for a Lowe’s store on part of the site of the eastern New Orleans mall, which struggled economically for many years and has been closed since Hurricane Katrina.

Construction of the store would be the first step in turning what was a single shopping center into several separate parcels, with most of the old center to be demolished.

The store, featuring 139,000 square feet of interior floor space and a 43,000-square-foot outdoor garden center, would be built on a 13.4-acre site next to the Interstate 10 service road. It would face Read Boulevard but would be set back about 715 feet from Read, behind a large parking lot and a smaller commercial building.

The city’s regulations for “big box” retail stores require that stores be built close to streets rather than behind huge parking lots, and an analysis of the proposal by the planning staff said the proposed site, because it is so far from Read, “would normally be of concern.”

However, the staff said, “given the nature of the (store) and the reconfiguration of the former shopping center site into several smaller parcels separated by tree-lined roadways, the proposed siting appears to be the most practical arrangement for both visibility and access.”

The commission endorsed the staff’s recommendations that the Lowe’s parking lot be reduced from 552 spaces to 465 spaces, that pedestrian pathways through the lot should be redesigned and that a proposed 60-foot-high pylon sign directed toward traffic on I-10 should be limited to 35 feet, the highest allowed under city regulations.

In view of the store’s size and location, the staff and commission recommended granting waivers of several hundred square feet to normal limits on the size of signage.

Overall, the staff’s analysis said, construction of the Lowe’s “will begin to resurrect a neglected site and bring a higher degree of commercial and residential activity in an area of New Orleans East that has suffered from disinvestment.”

Because the commission considered the proposal as a “design review” rather than a zoning petition, it did not hold a public hearing, and no one spoke for or against the proposed design or the commission’s suggested amendments to it.

The site is in Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis’ district. If the council follows tradition, it likely will go along with her recommendations on whether to accept the commission’s changes or approve the original design.