[StBernard] LOYALTY REWARDED

[Westley Annis]

LOYALTY REWARDED
In tightly knit St. Bernard Parish, merchants who have made the difficult
commitment to setting up shop are being favored by grateful customers 
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
By Jaquetta White
Business writer 
This is the third in an occasional series on the comeback of neighborhood
retail hubs. 

The clothing store, art gallery and tanning salon at 1201 E. Judge Perez
Drive in Chalmette share more than an address. 

In St. Bernard Parish, which was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina floodwaters,
the businesses are among those with a rare distinction: They came back. 

About 370, or one-quarter, of the 1,400 storefronts that operated in the
parish before the August 2005 hurricane have reopened. But many of the
storefronts house businesses that didn't previously have a presence in the
parish. 

Retail operations selling home repair products, furniture and other goods
needed in a community where virtually every home will have to be rebuilt
have moved into St. Bernard. Stores such as four-month-old Futons Unlimited
line Judge Perez Drive and Paris Road, the parish's two main commercial
arteries. 

Mixed in between, and fewer in number, are businesses that operated there
before Katrina and have returned, such as the All About Me clothing store. 

"It looks like we're having a mixture of businesses coming back," Parish
Council member Joey DiFatta said. "Once the businesses are here, the folks
will want to come back and patronize them." 

DiFatta and others say the comeback of a neighborhood retail hub is often
the signal of progress that homeowners are looking for in making their own
decision to return and rebuild. Some St. Bernard business owners say they
are aware of the impact their presence can have and are trying to lead by
example. 

"I felt that if some businesses would come back, others would," said Angie
Balli, who owns All About Me. "I felt a sense of responsibility to start the
process." 

But the return of retail to St. Bernard, which has just one-third of its
pre-Katrina population, has been slow. There is no movie theater, skating
rink or bowling alley in parish, which had all three before Katrina.
Residents complain that there are too few open bank branches. Until
September, only one full-line grocery was operating. Major retailer Wal-Mart
remains shuttered. 

And business owners who have taken the plunge and reopened say they're
concerned about what 2007 will hold. 

Balli worries that business will dry up when the "people who come in and
make a purchase just to say 'thank you for opening' no longer do so." 

"I think the people that were coming back, came back," Balli said, adding
that many of her customers have relocated to the north shore. "It'll be
interesting to see what happens" this year. 


Supplies for rebuilding 


The most prolific growth in the parish has been of businesses selling
products tied to the rebuilding effort. 

Take the aptly named Welcome Back Furnishings, which opened in November in a
spot that once held a sandwich shop and cell phone retailer. Owner Connie
Lackey, who operated two Subway stores before the storm, said she never
intended to go into the furniture sales business. But after her stores were
wiped out and her husband took a job at a La-Z-Boy retailer, she "recognized
the need" for a furniture store in St. Bernard. 

Sales at the store have been "brisk," Lackey said as she paused from
selecting new inventory and greeting a lunch rush of customers. 

"It's a small store, but we try to carry a little bit of everything," Lackey
said. "It's one of the few places to shop in Chalmette." 

Just down the street, Futons Unlimited and M&M Fireplace also are new since
the storm. Both say they're in St. Bernard for the long haul. 

"I think a lot of folks kind of jump on the bandwagon when something like
this happens," said Philip Bayer, who owns the futon retailer. "We like to
enforce that when all this is done, we'll still be here." 

Likewise at M&M, an 11-year-old fireplace retailer and installation company.


Opening in St. Bernard Parish after Katrina made good business sense, the
store owners said. "Pretty much all the fireplaces here flooded and have to
be replaced," said Marcus Bergeron, who owns the business. The company
opened a showroom on East Judge Perez last summer. 

Added Bayer: "A lot of people just need beds and sofas." The futon dealer
has another new location on the West Bank and a long-standing Metairie
operation. 

Bergeron gets so much business that he often has to close the store so that
he and his brother, two of the business's three employees, can leave to
install fireplaces. 

"Business comes in spurts," Bergeron said. "You can tell when the checks
come in." 

Business has also been helped along by the addition of stoplights near his
store. The lights slow traffic and direct more business to M&M, said
Bergeron. 


Prime locations 


Judge Perez Drive and Paris Road have served as the parish's primary retail
corridors since long before Katrina. But businesses have become even more
concentrated along those stretches because that area did not flood as badly
as some other parts of the parish. 

"Areas that had the least amount of water are coming back the quickest,"
DiFatta said. "And that's what you're seeing, as a pocket of recovery, are
those that had the least amount of water." 

"It seems like the businesses that are coming back are trying to locate
where the population is, where the people are coming back," said Charles
Ponstein, who has been tracking business return for St. Bernard. "In Meraux,
for example, there is not much activity." 

"There's business down here and there's an economy," said Brittney Ray
Robin. "People are buying and people are selling." 

Robin reopened her flower shop, Brittney Ray's Florist & Gifts, in Chalmette
a year ago, even though she had little indication that there would be much
demand for wedding bouquets. 

After reopening, Robin said she had assumed her shop wouldn't need many
roses for Valentine's Day 2006. But after selling out, she had to double the
order. 

"Time doesn't stop," Robin said. "And it's funny, because people assume that
people are saving their money for their new cabinets, but flowers make
people happy." 

The shop kept busy with funerals for several months, Robin said, but didn't
have time for a funeral in November because it had too many weddings. 

"We're just about as busy as we were before," Robin said. 

Balli, the owner of All About Me, said it helps that St. Bernard is a
tight-knit community, so residents feel obliged to patronize businesses that
reopen there, just as businesses that have returned felt obligated to open. 

That loyalty has served All About Me well in its first months of reopening.
Since reopening in mid-August, nearly one year after Katrina forced it to
shut, All About Me has matched its pre-storm sales in every month except
December, Balli said. That month was slower because many of the St. Bernard
residents who have returned did their Christmas shopping in other areas. 

"I think people are loyal to the businesses that did reopen in St. Bernard,"
Balli said. "They know that if they want businesses to open, they've got to
support them." 

Ronda Deforest reopened her bakery, Flour Power, before she was able to move
into her home. She sometimes cooks meals for her family at the shop's
kitchen because her home doesn't have an operable kitchen. 

Deforest said the catalyst for her return, even though there was little
demand initially for wedding cakes, was the opening of the St. Bernard
Unified School District. 

"We wanted to be a part of that," Deforest said. 

For a time, Deforest said, she was resigned to thinking she would not be
able to return to her old business format. Before the storm, the crux of
Flour Power's business involved selling baked goods wholesale to places such
as the Hyatt Regency Hotel, which remains closed from the storm. 

"We initially definitely were not doing anything like what we were doing
before the storm," Deforest said. "All of our wholesale business initially
was gone." 

Business has returned, she said, but still is "nowhere near where we were
before Katrina." 

In the meantime, Flour Power has been able to draw business from another
source: its deli. The bakery, which didn't serve food before the storm, now
is a popular lunch spot. 


Big box blues 


Concerns about the viability of the market in St. Bernard have kept some
larger retail players, such as Wal-Mart, from reopening. 

Wal-Mart's parking lot is currently a staging ground for other operations. A
spokesman for the retail chain said the company has not decided what will
happen with the store. 

"I don't want to go on record for certain saying the store will reopen,"
spokesman Tice White said. "We do have every intent of reopening that store
when we confirm that there is a population in place to support it." 

Big-box retailer Kmart and department store Sears, which shared space in the
4000 block of East Judge Perez, also have not reopened. Kim Freely, a
spokeswoman for Sears Holding, which owns the stores, said there "are no
announced dates for the opening at this point." 

She declined to clarify whether that meant the stores would reopen at all.
All the other Sears and Kmart stores in the area before Katrina have
reopened, Freely said. 

"That shows we are very committed to the area." 

Another noticeable difference is the fewer bank branches open in the parish.


"I'm aggravated by that," said Lackey of Welcome Back Furnishings. She said
she cannot allow employees to cash their paychecks during lunch because the
trip can take two hours. 

When Gulf Coast Bank opened its St. Bernard Parish branch just weeks after
Katrina, it was one of the only businesses operating in the parish. Still,
the total number of bank branches open in the parish remains less than what
it was before the storm. 

Ponstein said businesses in St. Bernard, like those in Orleans Parish, are
searching for more governmental financial aid. 

"The problems businesses are having in St. Bernard and other
hurricane-ravaged areas is there are no grants out there," Ponstein said.
"Most of them were in debt already, and they can't go into further debt." 

DiFatta agreed. 

"Obviously, the obstacle is money, either through the SBA or the LRA,"
DiFatta said. "If those two entities would get in gear, that would be the
bigger catalyst. It's encouraging to see what's happening, although we all
would like the pace to be faster." 


. . . . . . . 

Jaquetta White can be reached at jwhite at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3494.