NEW ORLEANS — Amid ills from rising crime to deteriorated schools, most retailing here appears to be holding its own as the city celebrates Mardi Gras today.
And, 18 months after Hurricane Katrina, new small merchants are feeding the economy in bubble-like pockets.
There also are retailers like Brigitte Holthausen, who for the first time in 26 years will not celebrate Mardi Gras here. Holthausen operates two Hemline stores in the French Quarter and on Magazine Street. The stores remain, but she has moved to La Jolla, Calif., with her husband and 11-year-old daughter. She said bluntly of the city’s travails, “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
Holthausen commutes to New Orleans every 10 days for 10-day stints to be hands-on at her stores. “It is where we started, and it is not an option to close,” she said.
On a six-mile stretch of Magazine Street filled with cafes and galleries, more than a dozen shops have opened in the last two months; over half are women’s ready-to-wear boutiques. Merchandise ranges from mid-price to a couture design studio where Suzanne Perron specializes in $5,000 to $8,000 gowns.
Although the majority of shops have been launched by local owners, the November opening of an almost 4,000-square-foot Chico’s brought the street’s first women’s chain and the company’s first freestanding store in New Orleans. Three other Chico’s are in shopping centers in the region.
“The Chico’s demographics are there and we are meeting expectations,” said Michael Smith, Chico’s vice president of investor and community relations. “The area has high traffic and high sales volume.”
In the French Quarter, heavily dependent on slow-to-return tourists and convention traffic, women’s retail is stable, partly because landlords have offered rent concessions of as much as 50 percent. Nearby, Saks Fifth Avenue at Shops at Canal Place has met expectations since reopening in September, said general manager Carolyn Elder.
Joining at least a dozen women’s boutiques with higher price points, some of the newcomers have supplanted antiques shops and others have filled vacant spaces. Many said they were drawn by opportunity — and see their role as helping the city’s economic recovery.
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A year ago, sisters Angelina and Christina LoCicero were uncertain they would remain in New Orleans. But members of their extended family decided to stay, so they decided to pursue a dream. With savings and a commercial loan co-signed by their father, the sisters opened the 1,100-square-foot Sorella boutique in November.
They believe competition will work to their advantage. Surveying the store stocked with tops, separates and dresses ranging from $70 to $300, Angelina said, “Each one of us has our own niche and I think we complement one another.”
Another Magazine Street boutique, Ropa Fashion Loft, will be opened next month by co-owners Patricia Gattuso and Krystal Manzanares, who are also sisters. “I am fearful that the market might not be here, but that’s what small biz is all about — risk,” Gattuso said. “I was born and raised here and I’m bonded here. You have to create your own destiny and contribute to the city.”
Still, caution is guiding their game plan. They will merchandise women’s ready-to-wear in half of the 2,600-square-foot store for the first six months. Once they get a better sense of customers and the market, they will expand to intimate apparel, maternity and cosmetics.
In New Orleans suburbs, malls said they were posting record sales. At the 1.1-million- square-foot Lakeside Shopping Center, the last quarter of 2006 was the best in 10 years, said Mel Grodsky, president of Lakeside Shopping Center Merchants Association. “As people move home from being temporarily housed in trailers or displaced for extended periods out of town, they are filling their closets,” he said.
In some areas, new shopping centers are propelling the comeback. In New Orleans East, a neighborhood where only 50 percent of the residents have returned, a major retail center is planned to replace one demolished two weeks ago.
North of the city, the bedroom communities of Mandeville and Covington have posted population growth of 30 percent each, partly from New Orleanians seeking what they consider safer, less flood-prone neighborhoods.
On a 222-acre site, Colonial Properties of Birmingham, Ala., plans to open Nor du Lac, a $200 million, 1-million-square-foot shopping center, by holiday, 2008. It will have 65 retailers and at least two anchors.