With recent talk of an IKEA possibly coming to hold down an anchor store at the now dormant Esplanade Mall location, there’s renewed discussion about what will happen with that property.
Jerry Bologna is Executive Director of the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission (JEDCO) and says redeveloping the site could be complicated. “There are some challenges with the ownership of that mall, mainly that they don’t have clear ownership of the entire site,” Bologna notes.
“Dillard’s and Target own their own footprint on the mall property. The movie theater also owns their own portion, so it carves out parts of the property and prevents the main owner of the mall from doing any large-scale redevelopment of the entire site,” emphasizes Bologna.
The Kenner City Council earlier rejected a proposal to put a hotel on the site of the former mall. Bologna points out that the city leaders want to keep the site from being even more carved up (which would potentially even further complicate future development). The council also wants to keep the location commercial, as the tax dollars that would generate much-needed tax dollars.
“Everything is on the table, but one consideration that is important is that all of South Louisiana is reliant on sales tax. Making sure that it comes back commercially in some way is important because the Esplanade Mall used to be the largest sales tax generator in Kenner, and they would like to see whatever replaces it become a similar financial engine,” Bologna points out.
While plenty of plans have been tossed around as potential replacements for the Esplanade Mall, Bologna pointed out that Ikea would be ideal because it would take up the location's entire footprint. Other proposed uses for the site would require potentially lengthy battles between owners that could drag on for quite some time.
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