New Businesses Coming to Shoe Creek

September 22, 2022 0 Comments

– Former Central Mayor Jr. Shelton (2014-2018) took a lot of heat when he supported building a Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) at Shoe Creek off Sullivan Road in Central. However, the Central City Council approved the project. Dave Freneaux filed suit to stop the project over the number of apartments, but after a legal battle, the courts gave Shoe Creek the green light.

Ground-breaking for the massive project was held Oct. 25, 2016. Since then, much progress has been made at Shoe Creek but the promised commercial development has been slow. However, Central Mayor David Barrow this week announced that eight retail establishments are coming to Shoe Creek. They are:

•Aldi, a 21,000-square-foot national supermarket chain

•Five Guys Hamburgers

•Great American Cookies

•Marble Slab Creamery

•CC’s Coffee House

•SportClips Haircuts

•Bank of Zachary, and

•Avant Tous

The original developer of Shoe Creek, Robert Daigle, said from the beginning he expected Aldi to be part of the project, according to former Mayor Shelton. That was also true of CC’s Coffee.

The Aldi supermarket chain coming to Central is, of course, a major development. Aldi is one of the largest retailers in the world with 12,400 stores in 20 countries.

Aldi is actually two separate companies, Aldi North and Aldi South. The stores themselves are a bit different from what consumers in Louisiana are used to.

Here are a few differences:

•In general, Aldi stores have no frills. They display a lot of items at discount prices, especially staples that every household buys.

•The new Aldi store in Central is likely to offer many brands that are owned by Aldi and others that are unknown to Central families. Aldi uses private labels and generally avoids namebrands. Only about 10 percent of products offered are namebrands.

•Aldi stores are big on weekly specials. These could include special deals on clothing, electronics, computers, and even appliances. The sales can last a week, but often everything is sold very quickly. Shoppers often wait for these deals.

•Aldi uses a lot of boxes, milk racks, and prepackaged produce.

Aldi opened its first store in Louisiana in February at the corner of Ambassador Caffery and Kaliste Saloom in Lafayette. It added a second store at 1102 E. Admiral Doyle

Drive in New Iberia this spring.

New stores are also planned for:

•Baton Rouge – Two stores

•Lafayette – 3200 Louisiana

•LaPlace – 2122 W. Airline Hwy.

•Covington – 123 Holiday Blvd.

•Metairie – 8855 Veterans Memorial Blvd.

•Marrero – 1849 Barataria Blvd.

Altogether, Aldi has more than 2,200 stores in the United States.

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Five Guys is a popular hamburger chain with 1,700 locations around the globe including two in Baton Rouge and one in each of the state’s 12 largest cities.

It prides itself in three things:

•We only use fresh ground beef.

•We only use peanut oil.

•There are no freezers in Five Guys locations, just coolers.

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CC’s Coffee House has 30 shops in Louisiana. It spun off from Community Coffee in 2013 and is a separate company also owned by the Saurage family.

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Marble Slab creamery has been specializing in small batch ice cream since 1983. It has 392 stores including three in Baton Rouge.

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The Bank of Zachary is planning to move its Hooper Road branch to the new location, which will be on the corner of Sullivan Road and Settlement.

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Great American Cookies often teams up with Marble Slab. They had a store in Cortana and currently have one in Juban Crossing.