Difficult deal for Gentilly site finally gets done
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority struck a long-awaited deal last night for the world's largest retailer to purchase the abandoned Gentilly Woods Shopping Mall for $3 million. A NORA committee approved the deal at a meeting Thursday.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority struck a long-awaited deal Wednesday night for the world's largest retailer to purchase the abandoned Gentilly Woods Shopping Mall, shown here in 2008, for $3 million.The fate of the Gentilly Woods site at the corner of Chef Menteur Highway and Press Drive has been a withering saga for the city and NORA since Hurricane Katrina. First, NORA outbid a private developer in 2008 to purchase the abandoned shopping mall, a move that raised eyebrows and cost $4.3 million in federal recovery grants. Then, it rejected a $15.9 million offer from Wal-Mart to build its big-box store there, instead selecting a small developer's proposal that ended up flopping for lack of financing.
The Wal-Mart proposal wasn't popular initially with neighborhood groups, but as things dragged on, they became desperate for almost any deal to redevelop the site. NORA rebid the job in 2011 and selected Wal-Mart, but by December was still $400,000 apart on a purchase price.
A NORA appraisal of the property in 2008 valued it at $5.5 million.
A deal that NORA thought could be done by Christmas 2011 didn't get done until Wednesday night. NORA agreed to sell it for $3 million and Wal-Mart agreed in principle to pay for its own demolition of the existing structures, to remediate any contamination and to adopt the city's goals for hiring disadvantaged and minority-owned small businesses from the construction of the store through the hiring of store staff, NORA director Jeff Hebert said.
The city's DBE goal is to pay 35 percent of the money for a project to disadvantaged business enterprises. It's not known whether the land is contaminated or how much remediation must be done, but there was a drycleaners there before Katrina.
"The community has waited long enough for something to happen at that site," Hebert said. "And Wal-Mart says it wants to be a player in that neighborhood." The mega-company has already done so, sponsoring the last Gentilly Fest.
The deal won't become official until the full NORA board approves it and the Wal-Mart land acquisition committee does the same. That committee is expected to meet in the next two weeks at the company's world headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.