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Setting up shop – Third Street is bustling with bars and restaurants. Will more retail follow?

When is a pharmacy not just a pharmacy? When a lot of eyes and hopes are on it as a touchstone for future downtown development, both commercial and residential.

On the heels of high-profile bar and restaurant openings like Blend, City Bar, Restaurant IPO, The Office and the upcoming Bar Blanc, Third Street is bustling with nightlife.

What will it take for downtown’s daylife to catch up?

This month, local pharmacists T.J. and Aimee Woodard are set to open Prescriptions to Geaux near the corner of Third and Florida streets, two doors down from the Our Lady of the Lake walk-in clinic.

The pharmacy’s success could be a strong indicator of the future viability of residential and retail growth in the Central Business District.

“I wasn’t sure about the idea for a location, but several of my former classmates work downtown and expressed interest in a pharmacy there,” says T.J. Woodard, a Bossier City native with an MBA from LSU. “The more I looked into it, I saw a real opportunity.”

Woodard says assistance from the Downtown Development District was crucial to his decision, and the location helped dictate the business model.

“The idea is that if someone works eight to five, the last thing they want to do is go wait an hour at the drugstore for their medication,” he says. “With us, they can either pick up downtown, or I’ll deliver directly to them, and they can go home to be with their families right after work.”

Now more than ever, DDD Executive Director Davis Rhorer’s attention is on making downtown attractive to residents as much as to businesses. That means reeling in more shopping and service-based companies like Prescriptions to Geaux.

A recent DDD survey notched overwhelming support for a grocery, too.

“The next step to securing a downtown grocery is to conduct a market analysis that studies the viability of a select group of properties,” Rhorer says.

Next to “viability,” the term “livability” may be Rhorer’s favorite. Downtown needs more of it.

With florist and local-themed gift shop Fleur du Jour flourishing at the Kress Building, and new investments being made at the Lafayette Building, the Commerce Building and 438 Main Street, a framework is beginning to coalesce that’s suitable for a higher density of coffee shops that are open at night and clothing, home décor, book and music stores that are open during the day.

Still, most downtown property owners acknowledge that retail is lagging behind the more popular purveyors of food and alcohol. And to catch up will take some time.

“Right now you have a lot of young people coming down here who are eager to spend money on social things, but who haven’t embraced the same attitude with shopping,” says attorney and property owner Danny McGlynn. “For that, you need more of a population downtown.”

Time is one challenge, but staring uncertainty in the face and not blinking is another. Tsunami owner Leah Simon believes it could take just two or three bold entrepreneurs to trigger more clothes shopping downtown.

“It’s easy to bar-hop, and retail stores want people to be able to shop hop,” Simon says. “They know people can’t do that downtown yet, so locating there is a risk.”

Simon operates locations of her sushi restaurant at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge and on Jefferson Street in Lafayette, where she also owns the Buchanan Lofts. She has witnessed Lafayette’s downtown retail grow more rapidly than that of its Capital City counterpart.

“Baton Rouge is a strip mall-raised community,” Simon says. “When we first opened Tsunami, almost everyone over 50 didn’t like the idea of parking in a garage to get to the restaurant. Because where else in Baton Rouge do you have to do that? It was a change, and people resist that.”

Like Baton Rouge, downtown Lafayette’s nightlife still outpaces its shopping, but things are beginning to even out in Cajun Country, and it is young entrepreneurs who are taking the lead.

“We love our downtown restaurants and bars, but now there are five or six retail shops, a bunch of galleries, coffee and gelato shops,” says Lafayette retailer John Petersen. “That means people can make a day of it. It’s awesome.”

Nearly two years ago, Petersen and his business partner Ross Fontenot opened a casual men’s clothing store called Genterie Supply Co. in the heart of downtown Lafayette.

They wouldn’t have set up shop anywhere else.

“It was important to us that we locate where the vibe was genuine and real with some historical weight, because we think that reflects the aesthetic of our store,” Petersen says. “It had to be congruent inside and outside. We couldn’t set up in a shopping center somewhere and feel authentic.”

The question then becomes which local shop owners find the aesthetic of downtown Baton Rouge to be most suitable to their style, and who among them can afford the risk of being an early adopter.

“With downtown, you truly have a captive audience,” says Fleur du Jour owner Lani Guilbeau, now in her third year downtown and recently relocated to the historic Kress Building at Third and Main. “You just have to know how to reach them through marketing and partnerships. I give it three years, and retail will be up to speed for downtown. It’s retail that is going to bring us back to how downtown was in its heyday.”