Louisiana-based grocer opening second Lafayette store south of Acadiana Mall
The supermarket chain Rouses is expanding its Lafayette operations with a 54,000-square-foot store at Johnston Street and Duhon Road, next to Walgreens. Plans for the new store were submitted to local government late last month, but the project has not been permitted.
The store is about a year behind the schedule the grocer had initially planned. Donny Rouse, managing partner of the Thibodaux-based chain of about 40 stores, told ABiz in May 2012 that he hoped the store would open in the summer of 2013. Rouses had the 11-acre tract on Johnston Street under contract at that time.
"We knew when we opened up this first Lafayette store that we would do a second one," Rouse said back then. "This is the site we had originally looked at five years ago before we opened in Youngsville."
The new store will be approximately 10,000 square feet larger than the existing Lafayette store on Bertrand Drive across from Cajun Field, local government records indicate.
A message left for Donny Rouse was not immediately returned.
The company has been busy preparing to make a big push into the Mobile, Ala., market, where it assumed ownership of six former Belle Foods stores purchased through a deal in bankruptcy court. Read more from the Times-Picayune here.