Making progress

• By CHAD CALDER
• Advocate business writer
• Published: May 11, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Changes long in the works are beginning to take place on a vibrant stretch of Baton Rouge road less than a mile long.

The Perkins Road overpass area, home to a high concentration of local bars, restaurants and goods and service retailers, will see its namesake bridge rehabilitated, it’s “anchor” revived (albeit in a different form) and the start of the long-awaited redevelopment of the former Acadian Village shopping center.

--Construction crews will begin work on the former Perkins Road Hardware building in the next few weeks, beginning its transformation into a mixed-use development. It will include a new concept by an undisclosed New Orleans-area restaurant, a local gourmet pizzeria and four apartment units on second and third levels.

Much of the warehouse behind the store will be torn down for parking, though a later phase could turn the remaining 2,000 square feet of the warehouse into retail or office space.

Perkins Road Hardware, an institution for the neighborhood and its retail anchor, caught fire in December 2006 and never reopened. Its owners decided to sell the building to developer Donnie Jarreau.

--The Acme Oyster House is now under construction in the former Acadian Village shopping center at Perkins Road and Acadian Thruway/Stanford Avenue and could open by the end of August.

Jeremy DeBlieux, Acme’s director of business development, said the French Quarter institution’s fifth and newest location is on schedule to open in late summer. It will seat about 200 diners and be open for lunch and dinner, seven days a week.

A spokesman for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s real estate development unit, which bought the shopping center in 2004 after it was abandoned by Wal-Mart, said that more tenants could be announced later this year.

--The overpass, built in 1937 when the city-parish line was just over the hill at Virgil and Perkins, could begin an 18-week, $2.5 million rehabilitation by the end of the year. It last had some minor rehabilitation in the late 1970s. The work this time will include redoing the decking under the asphalt, realigning deck panels, replacing bearings, fixing the sidewalks and replacing the southern approach. “The bridge is strong,” said city-parish drainage and bridge engineer Jim Ferguson. “It just has some critical deficiencies that need to be addressed, and it needs to be rehabilitated.”

A public meeting will be held May 28 to notify the community of the project, 80 percent of which will be funded by the federal government and 20 percent from the state.

--New turn lanes in both directions at each quadrant at the intersection of Perkins and Stanford Avenue/Acadian Thruway are part of the city-parish’s Green Light Initiative. The $8.5 million effort, which will include a slight widening of the right-of-way and some new curb cuts, is listed on the city-parish’s Web site, though a representative for the program was unavailable for comment.

Taken from Perks Coffee House above the overpass down to Acadian/Stanford, the stretch of road is a local who’s who of retail categories all but killed off in other areas by national chains over the last two decades. 

Its grocery store, sporting And, of course, until about 18 months ago, there was a local hardware store there, too.