Indoor playground to open on Florida Boulevard | Business | theadvocate.com

The Ardenwood Shopping Center on Florida Boulevard. Furniture Gallery is closing its Baton Rouge store as part of a redevelopment plan for the shopping center.

A chain of indoor playgrounds plans to open a location in the redeveloped Ardenwood Shopping Center.

Fun City Adventure Park has submitted an application to demolish and remodel the interior of 5905 Florida Blvd., according to documents submitted last month with the East Baton Rouge Parish Planning Department. The plan is to remodel the space with bumper cars, a rock climbing wall, indoor playground equipment, trampolines, foam pits, ball pits and an arcade.

The playground could open in the next nine to 12 months, said Mario Brunelli, the real estate broker for Fun City. Hiring should start in seven months.

Fun City operates about 25 indoor playgrounds in the U.S., with most of them in the Northeast. The company recently opened a location in Montgomery, Alabama, in what had been a movie theater.

Fun City will take up about 63,000 square feet in Ardenwood, making the Baton Rouge location one of the largest for the company, Brunelli said.

"We think it's a great location," he said. "We thought it was more of a centralized location than our competitors out there."

A number of indoor playgrounds have opened in high-profile retail spaces in recent years. Dallas-based Main Event opened a family fun center at the Mall of Louisiana in 2019 in the former HHGregg store.

Surge Entertainment, a chain of indoor parks co-owned by former Saints quarterback Drew Brees, opened a location earlier this year in a former Winn-Dixie space near LSU.

Fun City will go into a space in Ardenwood that had been occupied by Furniture Gallery and a flea market. The center is right behind the freestanding Rouses Market that opened in January.

Southern Classic Chicken is set to start construction on a stand-alone restaurant next to Rouses early next year, said Donnie Jarreau, a local developer. Jarreau has been helping the Shreveport-based chain establish a footing in Baton Rouge. The restaurant should open by summer.

The addition of Fun City and Southern Classic will make Ardenwood fully occupied, said Jonathan Walker, of Maestri Murrell Commercial Real Estate, who manages the group that owns the shopping center.

"The addition of Fun City to Ardenwood Shopping Center is great for the community as it will provide an entertainment venue to North Baton Rouge and adds a complementary use for the rest of the center," Walker said in an email.

The area surrounding the shopping center has seen multiple new developments in the past few years.

The $200 million Amazon fulfillment center at the former Cortana Mall site is just down Florida Boulevard, as is a 49-unit affordable housing development on the former Borden Dairy site. Additionally, a 100-unit apartment complex next to the A.C. Lewis YMCA is under construction nearby on South Foster Drive.

Email Timothy Boone at [email protected].