Sandwiched between dead businesses and growing housing complexes just past the North Gates of LSU, Louie’s Cafe is a community institution that doesn’t sleep.
At a decent hour, the parking lot is rarely at capacity. That’s because people don’t drive to Louie’s at a normal time of night. They walk. Driving is reserved for the drunken patrons when the bars begin to close after 2 a.m.
At about 8 p.m. this past Wednesday, the business had only a few patrons. Three students, a table of middle-aged people – probably University employees – were there, and only one waitress was on duty. But all that is about to change.
This is a story about numbers.
It’s about the smaller number of students who live in the North Gate area of LSU right now - and how much that number is about to skyrocket. University Partners, a division of Dallas-based FirstWorthing Co., is building enough space to house another 381 students just outside of North Gate by the fall of 2006. University Partners plans to open another apartment complex with 360 more beds by fall 2007.
Another developer, Sterling University Housing, plans to open a 98-unit, 348-bed facility on Aug. 15.
Although developers say the businesses that have survived the harsh economic climate of the area in the past few years will benefit from the increased traffic, competition will also increase.
University Partners, which owns The Venue at North Gate and University House at Highland, its newest development, said it plans to bring in more businesses to boost what has been a struggling economic region.
More businesses. To the tune of 25,000 more square feet. That’s a lot of retail space to build on top of the now-demolished shopping center that used to house locally-owned restaurants and a grocery store.
But business owners and students both appear cautiously optimistic about the area – strangely in sync with the big, out-of-town developers’ message: they’re only trying to help.
 
LAND GRAB
For more than a year, University Partners has been buying land and razing buildings in the North Gate area, planning to make the area the place to live around the LSU campus.
Kim Hardcastle, spokeswoman for University Partners, said the move to add housing and retail space all in one move is a first for the company.
Hardcastle said there will be 10 to 15 new retail tenants in the development, which will be geared “to serve the University environment as a whole.”
“It’s kind of modeled after the new-urbanism type movement of live, work and play,” Hardcastle said. “Everything is in walking distance for the people who live in the community; it revitalizes the community as a whole.”
Dan Soyka, market director for University Partners, said the North Gate area is unique because the company owns so many properties in one area.
“It’s a great opportunity, both from a business perspective but also from the perspective of us just having an opportunity to revitalize an area like North Gate,” he said.
And Sterling University Housing’s property, Sterling Northgate, will benefit from University Partners’ investment. Donna Riddle, property manager for the apartment complex, said Sterling and University Partners’ goal is to make North Gate more attractive than other living areas around campus.
“On the north side, the advantage we have is all of our units are walking distance to campus,” Riddle said. “That’s a huge factor. If you live on the south side, you pretty much have to have a vehicle.”
Riddle and Soyka agreed the selling point for students is that all of those beds are within walking distance of LSU.
There are fewer businesses along that walk than there were before their companies moved in though.
Since The Venue opened in 2004, a slew of businesses in the area has closed.
Gone are Chelsea’s, Saigon, Arzi’s Greek and Lebanese and Rocco’s Po-Boy.
Inga’s, local sandwich shop, has relocated to Chimes Street across from the School of Music, but owner Inga Kim said her business has picked up – and she’s more than ready for an increase in student traffic past her store.
 
CAN THEY HANDLE IT?
When the fall 2006 semester opens, The Venue, University House at Northgate and Sterling NorthGate will have added 729 new beds to an area that three years ago didn’t have any major apartment complexes. Add in The Venue, and that’s more than 1,000 new beds in two years.
North Gate Merchants Association member and Highland Coffees owner Clarke Cadzow said the residential boom is something the merchants are prepared to handle.
“When all of the newest apartments are finished being built and filled with residents, however, we would expect some increase in business,” Cadzow said in written comments.
Cadzow, who said he speaks with the merchants in the association regularly, also said that adding an employee or two could be a simple answer to serve increased traffic.
“Many people moving in may be new to the area but not new as customers,” Cadzow said.
Cadzow pointed to numbers and said 35 percent of the area’s customer base is “non-university business,” which helps the area stay afloat during LSU’s breaks and holidays.
“We hope that as the neighborhood gets more crowded and parking even more scarce, we do not lose some of our non-university customers who could decide that fighting the crowds is too difficult,” Cadzow said.
Cadzow emphasized that North Gate merchants are not “expecting to be overwhelmed with business.”
Soyka said University Partners believes bringing more students in will cause business to boom for the establishments that are already in the area.
“Retailers and merchants in the area could handle the additional business, particularly considering that there are open locations there. There are fewer merchants in the area than there could be,” Soyka said.
Louie’s general manager Fred Simonson said he’s not worried about the number of people coming through his restaurant - he said he’s seen hard times before, such as during Hurricane Katrina.
“We’re ready for high volume,” Simonson said. “The level of business we saw in the wake of the storm was unpredictable.”
But that high volume could drop off when University Partners opens its 25,000 square foot facility right across the street.
Simonson said he’s not worried.
“We have 1,100 potential customers across the street,” Simonson said. “People have to eat three times a day. If you’re in the restaurant business and you’re scared of competition, you’re in the wrong business.”
 
TRAFFIC HANGOVER
And the competition will come. By fall 2007 the 25,000 square feet of retail space will be filled with franchises of college-oriented businesses such as another coffee shop, but Cazdow is not anxious.
“At this time we are optimistic about the types of companies they will try to bring to their development,” Cazdow said. “Bringing several new, complementary businesses into their development could also be very beneficial.”
Cazdow said an expanded competition within the North Gate business community could also help the area compete with other areas to shop around Baton Rouge.
“We need to try and draw people in,” he said. “If we expect customers to go out of their way, fight traffic and search for parking in order to visit our shops and restaurants, we have to offer something unique.”
Louie’s patrons say the restaurant is nothing short of a unique place; as University students Karsten Becnel and Read Founds read the newspaper and enjoyed food from a restaurant Becnel said, has “a local feel to it.”
Becnel said that there is a demand for more businesses in the area, particularly restaurants, but the businesses brought in by University Partners may overwhelm local hangouts like Louie’s.
“I’m not going to want to go to the new businesses, but I probably will in the end,” he said.
Founds, an animal, dairy and poultry sciences freshman, said the newer chain restaurants will make the neighborhood “totally different.”
“It’ll be like you’re going to college anywhere,” Founds said. “This area is unique.”
But Soyka at University Partners says his company looks for a “complimentary mix of tenants that will work well with existing businesses.
“Our hope is that in the end the North Gate area has a full compliment of both national and local establishments; and they’re able to serve the residents of Baton Rouge and LSU students.”
“Our hope is to attract complementary businesses to the area to serve needs for the residents that are currently unmet.”
 
LIFE AFTER DEVELOPMENT
Although University Partners would not indicate exactly what types of businesses will be solicited for their retail space, Hardcastle said the company is using a local real estate consultant to recommend “the best mix of local, regional and national tenants.”
A forum held in LSU’s Journalism Building in February discussed ways to encourage University Partners to include a grocery store in their plans.
“If you started a student movement, put up a stance, they would listen,” Community-University Partnership Director Pat Smith said at the meeting, according to a Feb. 16 article by The Daily Reveille. “If no one says anything, they’ll put whatever there.”
Cadzow said developers are considering a drug store as a possible tenant. But a grocery store would benefit the entire community, said Thanesh Murugesu, electrical and computer engineering freshman and North Gate resident.
“It would be an improvement – it might improve employment in the area as well,” Murugesu said.
Chelsea’s owner David Remmetter said he is not sure if he would have accepted a spot in University Partners’ new retail space.
“I wouldn’t want to be sandwiched between chain stores,” Remmetter said.
Chelsea’s, he said, has been extremely successful at its new location on Perkins Road, though the restaurant is not the nearby lunch destination for students it once was.
Remmetter also warned the younger students that large apartment complexes could be drawn to the chain restaurants he expects to populate the new retail space where his restaurant used to stand.
Remmetter said developers have taken away too much parking, which would hurt his business if he were still in the North Gate area. It’s all for development, Remmetter said.
“Baton Rouge is becoming Any-corner USA – and I don’t want to be like that,” he said.
Back at Louie’s, Simonson said that many establishments in the North Gate area are “destination restaurants” that will always serve the community.
“It’s a neighborhood. We fill our niche,” Simonson said. “If people want Louie’s, they go to Louie’s. There’s not somebody 10 miles away doing what we do the way we do it.”
 
Contact Scott L. Sternberg at
[email protected]