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Stanley Versus Goliath
May 15, 2007
Original The Times-Picayune (posted on nola.com) article→
Stay Local! archive of this article ↓
The restaurant would feature a “great New Orleans brunch, po-boys, real New Orleans food. I could add pastries later in the back,” Boswell said. “God, I have an opportunity to open a great restaurant in a (historical) New Orleans institution that could last for decades, last well beyond me.”
[Read Stay Local’s letter to the Louisiana State Museum’s board chair— ed.]
The Times-Picayune
Stanley Versus Goliath
The Louisiana State Museum board will decide soon who will lease a key location
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
By Greg Thomas
[Read Stay Local’s letter to the Louisiana State Museum’s board chair— ed.]
Java giant Starbucks Coffee Co. and local restaurateur and chef Scott Boswell are competing for the lease on the old La Madeleine space in Jackson Square’s Lower Pontalba Building.
La Madeleine French Bakery and Restaurant, which had operated at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres streets for 23 years, never reopened the Jackson Square location after Hurricane Katrina and dropped its long-term lease on the site after it said it failed to get an adequate break on its rent payments in the wake of the storm.
The withdrawal of La Madeleine, which still operates several other locations in the metro area, opens up a high-profile location in one of the city’s most popular tourism corridors. Don Schwarcz of SRSA Commercial Real Estate said the 3,000-square-foot corner site is a solidretail location that should command top-dollar rents.
Like all the other retail locations in the state-owned Lower Pontalba Building, the former La Madeleine site is under the control of the Louisiana State Museum, and that group’s board is expected to discuss the lease proposals and make a decision in a few weeks.
Boswell said that if he wins the lease, he’ll open a Stanley restaurant much like the one he ran on Decatur Street before the storm. The new Stanley restaurant would include at least 50 dining tables plus a large soda fountain capable of seating 50.
The restaurant would feature a “great New Orleans brunch, po-boys, real New Orleans food. I could add pastries later in the back,” Boswell said. “God, I have an opportunity to open a great restaurant in a (historical) New Orleans institution that could last for decades, last well beyond me.”
Boswell said his Decatur Street location has not reopened because he’s been concentrating on getting the Jackson Square site, but it could reopen later as Stanley II. Boswell also operates the more upscale Stella Restaurant at 1024 Chartres St.
Boswell said he’s not asking the state for concessions on rent, which other Lower Pontalba tenants were granted after the storm to help them cope with the post-Katrina falloff in tourism. Other tenants have been paying just 30 percent of their pre-storm rents.
“I’m not begging for concessions. I’m begging to build New Orleans,” Boswell said. “We need to step up. Jackson Square is the center, and we need the center developed” in a manner that maintains the square’s integrity.
Starbucks says that if it wins the lease, it will open a store in the space as quickly as possible and begin offering an alternative for coffee-seeking consumers in the French Quarter.
“We’re just providing one more choice to Cafe du Monde,” said Alan Richardson, Starbucks’ regional marketing director. “We feel strongly this is a great choice for a particular community.”
Details of the financial proposals by Boswell and Starbucks have not been released. Louisiana State Museum Director David Kahn said the museum board has looked at both proposals and was not fully satisfied with either one. Some board members voiced concern about leasing the space to a national chain.
Although La Madeleine is a regional chain, its French name and longevity at the site had made it a Jackson Square icon, said regional manager Cliff Ford.
The Jackson Square location “was always one of our higher revenue generators. It was our Disneyland site,” Ford said.
But La Madeleine said it wanted a concession in its lease payments like those granted to other businesses on the ground floor of the Pontalba. Marsha Getto Aikens, La Madeleine’s director of operations, said she feels the museum wanted the chain out.
Kahn said the museum was sending La Madeleine rent bills and hearing little back, other than promises of reopening dates that kept passing by. What the museum wanted was for the restaurant to reopen, he said, because nearly every other Pontalba tenant had reopened and having the high-profile Madeleine space vacant many months after the storm hurt other tenants’ business.
The state ultimately hired attorneys and won a settlement to cancel La Madeleine’s lease that cost the company $61,843 in back rent, Kahn said.
La Madeleine officials said they are disappointed to be leaving Jackson Square, but Ford vowed that “we will be back in the French Quarter.”
Meanwhile, other local merchants are debating the merits of the Boswell and Starbucks lease proposals.
Joel Moak, who owns Southern Expressions Art at 513 St. Ann in the Lower Pontalba, said the new tenant at the former La Madeleine site, which is considered an anchor of sorts for the retail stretch, needs to draw people to the area.
“An anchor could bring people back,” Moak said. But he doesn’t think Starbucks would be enough of a draw. “In my opinion, I like the Stanley (proposal) very much. I don’t drink that much coffee, and the (coffeehouse) competition, with what’s already here, is not the thing to do,” he said, referring to Cafe du Monde and smaller coffee shops throughout the French Quarter.
But Carol Lewis, who along with daughter Mari Anne Lewis owns Violet’s, a women’s fashion boutique on Chartres Street behind the La Madeleine site, thinks Starbucks could be good news.
She said it would be most appropriate for a New Orleans business to operate at the site. But Starbucks would lure much-needed tourism traffic to the corner and last through good times and bad, she said.
“This is a dead corner,” Lewis said Monday. “I have nothing against Stanley and I wish he could make it there, but Starbucks can weather the market for 10 years. They’ve got the deep pockets to stick it out (until the market returns).”
Longtime Jackson Square artist Sam Hurwitch also supports Starbucks.
“The demographic has changed,” he said on Monday, a day when skies were cloudy and tourism was slow. “Starbucks is better than hamburgers and beer. Let them do a historic sign approved by the Vieux Carre Commission.”
Hurwitch said a Starbucks could turn around the corner’s slow retail activity.
But he probably won’t be a customer of Starbucks if the national chain moves in.
“I hate the taste of Starbucks coffee,” he said.
… … .
Greg Thomas can be reached at gthomas@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3399.
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