Johnston Street store in the works. By Leslie Turk
If you like Rouses’ Lafayette store, you’ll love its newest location in New Orleans’ Warehouse District. And if all goes as planned, the second Lafayette store, set to be constructed at Johnston Street and Duhon Road, will open late next summer with many of the same features offered in New Orleans.
“We knew when we opened up this first Lafayette store that we would do a second one,” says Donny Rouse, managing partner of the Thibodaux-based chain of 37 stores. “This is the site we had originally looked at five years ago before we opened in Youngsville.” Rouse says the 11-acre site is under contract.
Plans call for a 55,000-square-foot store, which is 10,000 square feet larger than the existing Lafayette store on Bertrand Drive. “It will have some new and exciting areas of the store and new departments we don’t currently offer in Lafayette,” Rouse says, declining to release any specifics until the plan is finalized. “Our store in Lafayette was pretty innovative for us, and then we opened our [Baronne Street] store in New Orleans, which we feel is the best store in the country. And we’re going to take that store, add a bunch of those pieces to this new prototype and then add some new ideas we’ve come up with over the last few months.
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