After enduring what the company says is a high volume of criminal incidents, Starbucks will permanently close its flagship store in the Crescent City.
The location, at the corner of Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, is already a much different establishment than the version that opened nine years ago, with much of the original commissioned artwork and antiques having been removed and a backroom, once intended for customer use, repurposed as an “employees only” space.
The location is just one of several nationwide cited in a July letter from the Starbucks home office that singled out stores that were subject to a national review because they offered considerably less safety to employees.
“We said we wanted to work with local leaders and be flexible using different tools to make premises safer, but if that didn't work that we would have to consider closures,” company spokesman Sam Jefferies said in a release announcing the closure. “That is what we have had to do in this instance.”
Starbucks will be shuttering 15 other locations in the U.S. due to safety concerns, in cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The New Orleans closure comes amid a continual rise in the crime rate and a continuing shortage of police officers and staff in the NOPD.
The franchise’s other locations in New Orleans will remain open. The closure is also not apparently related to the push across the country for the company’s workers to unionize. While some area locations had filed petition with the National Labor Relations Board to unionize, the 700 Canal Street location was not one of them.
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