The Bon Marche Mall in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was the
oldest of the four malls
which have historically existed in the Baton Rouge
metropolitan area. Opened
in 1960 as an open-air center, the mall was located on the
city’s burgeoning
retail strip of the era Florida Boulevard. This portion
of Florida from
Foster Drive to Airline Highway, today considered part of
“Mid-City” Baton
Rouge, was at the time a part of the growing urban fringe.
The original anchors
were Montgomery Ward, DH Holmes, Maison Blanche, and JC
Penney. Other major
original tenants included Woolworth and Piccadilly
Cafeteria. Baton Rouge Little
Theatre (a small community live theatre) also occupied a
part of the site on
the west side next to the mall, and is still there today.
Bon Marche thrived as Baton Rouge’s only shopping mall
until plans were
announced for the Cortana Mall (now Mall at Cortana) about
one mile further east on
Florida (at the interchange with Airline) in 1972. To
stay competitive, in
1974 the mall was enclosed and expanded to its ultimate
size of 892,880 sq. ft. on
a 65-acre site. A subdivision called Mall City, comprised
entirely of
multi-family dwellings, was developed to the north of
(“behind”) the mall around
this time; the units were marketed to young professionals
in an era when
apartment construction was booming due to demographic
factors (baby boomers in their
20s).
The Cortana Mall’s opening in August 1976 had an immediate
effect on Bon
Marche. The JC Penney closed on July 31, 1976, moving
down the road to anchor the
new mall where it remains today. The vacant JC Penney
space was later
converted into a movie theater.
The mall’s slide began around this time. If Cortana Mall
had not been in
such close proximity, perhaps both malls could have
coexisted, but Baton Rouge was
a small city at the time and a more distant location for a
new mall may have
been untenable from a market perspective. Urban expansion
in the Baton Rouge
area was shifting even then (and continues to do so) into
the eastern and
southern reaches of East Baton Rouge Parish, spilling over
into Ascension and
Livingston Parishes; because of these population shifts,
Bon Marche’s location became
increasingly undesirable from a market standpoint,
evolving from once-suburban
to now inner-city shopping mall (something which the Mall
at Cortana,
ironically, is now having to deal with to a degree).
Thus over the next two decades Bon Marche gradually lost
the majority of its
business to the Cortana Mall; big box shopping centers
further out in the
suburbs; and another competitor, the Mall of Louisiana,
which opened in 1997 on Baton
Rouge’s booming southeast side. There was a $3 million
renovation in 1991
but it apparently didn’t help things much.
As the mall evolved into an urban shopping center, of
course crime became an
issue. The Mall City neighborhood, now known as Melrose
East, became home (and
is still home) to many of the minority poor and working
class, and their nearby
presence served to scare more affluent shoppers away. In
the last years, the
mall’s stores apparently began to reflect these
demographics, with discount
stores taking the place of traditional mall shops.
The major tenants left over a period of years. As
mentioned before, the Bon
Marche JC Penney closed in 1976 in favor of a new store at
Cortana Mall. The
Maison Blanche, at three stories the largest of the
anchors (as opposed to the
mall’s single story), closed sometime in the 1980s. The
lower floors of the
vacant store were then subdivided into Solo Serve (a
discount store), a furniture
outlet, and local government offices on a portion of the
second floor, while
the third floor remained entirely vacant. The DH Holmes
was replaced by Dillards
in 1989 with that chain’s buyout of Holmes; the second
floor of the Dillards
store was closed in 1990 and the store became a clearance
outlet, finally
shuttering for good on February 25, 1999. Woolworth
closed in 1995.
Piccadilly’s had already moved to a freestanding location
further down Florida before
then. The UA Theatre (Bon Marche 15) also closed in 1999.
Wards, the last major
tenant to close, lasted until 2000 when the entire chain
folded.
By 1998 occupancy was at 30%, shoplifting was a major
concern, the owners had
been looking to sell the mall for four years without
success, and the mall was
generally reckoned as a community eyesore.
Though Bon Marche as a shopping mall is no more, the mall’s
fate after death
was of a very positive nature. In 1998, Sentinel Real
Estate Corp., the
mall’s owner since 1985, sold the mall property to a local
consortium. The new
owners converted the mall, now rechristened Bon Carré
Business Center, into a
technology center and start-up business incubator.
Through fits and starts, the
mall was slowly converted through a period of years, with
call centers, offices,
and technology-related businesses taking the place of
stores. The building
itself was renovated extensively, with a very attractive
exterior stucco treatment
and landscaping helping to transform the mall from an
eyesore to a community
asset. However, the basic mall structure and footprint
remains, which is
especially evident when looking at an aerial photo. One
commercial business, a
Regions Bank, remains as an outparcel. The old Wards
department store is now the
regional headquarters for Cox Communications.
The old Florida retail strip has been making a small
comeback in recent years:
besides Bon Carré, Kornmeyer’s Furniture (locally owned
and operated), just
across Lobdell from the former mall, recently completed an
expansion to its
store there; auto dealerships abound with no intention of
leaving anytime soon; a
long-abandoned freestanding Sears at Florida and Ardenwood
is being renovated
as the new headquarters for the parish parks and
recreation commission; and
retail occupancy is hovering around 75% but with
Katrina-induced growth should hold
steady.
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