West Monroe Already Designed Its Restaurant on the River. Here's What It's Still Waiting On

"We have the people, the people are wanting something like this, we just need someone to come in and invest." Mayor Staci Albritton Mitchell said that in late July, when West Monroe formally began looking for a private partner to build and run a two-story restaurant on city-owned land overlooking the Ouachita River.

That one line holds most of the story. For years the request has been simple: a restaurant on the river, ideally the "white tablecloth" kind, as the mayor put it again at a chamber breakfast in September. What has changed in 2026 is who is holding things up. The city has already done the slow public work. It has a federal permit, a building design and a parking plan. The open question is a private one. Can a developer make a roughly $2.5 million building on the river side of the levee pay off?

The Address Already Has a Restaurant History

The site sits at the end of Wood Street in downtown West Monroe. It is the former Exchange Café, and the city's downtown walking-tour brochure lists it at 101 Wood Street. The brochure says the café was a restaurant and bar run by Delia (Harris) Myles. It opened on the site in the 1920s and stayed open until about 1957. The building standing there now went up around 1950.

The brochure adds context that most riverfront coverage skips. The café, along with a barber shop on the same site in the 1920s and 1930s, was one of many West Monroe businesses run by African Americans during segregation. From the late 1800s until the 1960s, segregation laws and local custom barred African American owners from the main downtown streets, so their businesses sat at the edges of downtown or in African American neighborhoods.

The new project carries that history forward on purpose. The city's request for proposals describes the Exchange Café as a recognizable riverfront landmark "for decades." It asks developers to "honor the historic significance" of the café while redeveloping the site into a restaurant with the working name Marina Grill. The site is inside the Cotton Port Historic District. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 and earned Nationally Accredited Main Street status in 2023.

What City Hall Has Already Finished

The usual excuses for an empty riverfront lot are a missing permit, a missing plan or an unwilling city. None of them apply here.

By July, the mayor said the preliminary planning and permitting were done. In September she was more direct: "We actually have the permit from the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers. We just need a developer."

The design is well along too. The city engaged TBA Studio to draw a two-story concept, and the RFP describes those drawings as about 70 percent complete. Here is what the plan includes:

• A minimum of 117 seats, split into about 62 indoors and 55 outdoors
• A commercial kitchen, covered outdoor seating and an upper-level bar
• Raised dining areas laid out for views of the Ouachita River
• Traditional brick, natural stone accents, dark bronze storefronts and a wood deck or terrace facing the river

The city has also promised parking. It plans to build public parking at 117 North Riverfront Street to serve the restaurant and the rest of downtown. That lot is still planned work, and there is no report of it being built.

The restaurant would also join riverfront spots that already exist. Campbell's Landing, the public courtesy marina at 120 North Riverfront Street, has boat slips and river access, according to a 2023 News-Star report. A public fishing pier at 108 North Riverfront Street opened on Aug. 28, 2025. In the mayor's account, more than $52 million has gone into West Monroe infrastructure over the past five years, about half of it from grants.

The Part a Developer Has to Carry

The deal is laid out in the RFP. The city keeps ownership of the land. The selected developer pays for, finishes designing, builds and runs Marina Grill under a long-term ground lease.

The city has said it may help close the gap. The RFP lists a nominal ground lease, help with eligible construction costs, public infrastructure improvements, and local sales tax rebates on construction "where legally permissible." Each of these lowers the cost of building. None of them takes the cost off the developer's books.

Why the Levee Shapes Everything

Marina Grill would stand on the river side of the Ouachita River floodwall, which the RFP calls the "wet side." That location gives the restaurant its view, and it also explains why the design is so firm.

According to the RFP, TBA Studio's concept was drawn around the engineering and regulatory limits of building on the wet side of the levee, including U.S. Army Corps of Engineers design requirements. A developer may suggest reasonable changes for its own menu or operations. Those changes cannot add structural load to the levee or require a major redesign of the structural systems. The city states outright that it is "not soliciting alternative building concepts or substantially different building configurations."

From the builder's side, this cuts both ways. A permitted design that has already been engineered for the levee takes a lot of early risk off a developer, because foundations and structure are where waterfront projects tend to stall. The tradeoff is less room to adjust. A restaurant group that wants a larger kitchen, a different floor plan or a cheaper building system has to make it fit inside a structure whose weight on the levee is already set.

The Math Everyone Agrees Is Hard

At the September breakfast, the city and the West Monroe-West Ouachita Chamber of Commerce brought in Elliott Cook, director of real estate for Retail Strategies. He described the general climate plainly: "it's really hard to get real estate development deals to pencil right now. Construction costs are high, land costs are high, all of those things, material costs, construction costs, all the things are really difficult right now."

He then posed the question the city's incentives are meant to answer: "how can the city be a part of an incentive strategy that potentially attracts new businesses or has people reinvest in some of the existing centers or existing businesses as well?"

Marina Grill is a direct test of that idea. The city controls the land, so a nominal ground lease can take the land cost close to zero. The construction cost is harder to shrink. Brick, stone, a commercial kitchen and a deck engineered for the levee add up quickly, and the city has asked for a year-round restaurant, not a seasonal patio.

Demand is the other side of the ledger, and local tourism leaders are optimistic about it. Alana Cooper, president and CEO of Discover Monroe-West Monroe, said when the RFP opened that "having another restaurant in there is going to add to that mass of things to do in that area." The RFP points to steady downtown events, including Christmas on the River and the Ouachita Live concert series, as reasons people already come to the riverfront.

Where Things Stand in Early October

The timeline moved once. The RFP was issued July 22 with a deadline of 3 p.m. on Sept. 10, 2026, at City Hall, 2305 North 7th Street. KNOE reported on Sept. 22 that the city would take proposals through Sept. 30. Neither the city nor KNOE has explained the extension.

As of Oct. 4, no public report says how many proposals came in or whether the city has a preferred partner. That is not a sign the search failed. It is only four days after the deadline. In July, the mayor said several prospective developers had already shown interest.

The next steps are spelled out in the RFP. After the deadline, the city reviews proposals, may hold interviews or presentations, negotiates with one or more proposers and then picks a preferred proposer. The Board of Aldermen's July 21 agenda carried a motion to authorize advertising the request, which makes the board's agendas a reasonable place to watch for what comes next. The city's Request for Proposal page and the full RFP document are public for anyone who wants to read the terms.

Until then, the riverfront by the old Exchange Café is open to visitors at Campbell's Landing and the fishing pier, and 101 Wood Street is still waiting on its next restaurant.

The question behind Marina Grill comes up with every downtown building, and it is the kind of question John Michael Sampognaro brings a builder's eye to: what a structure costs to build, what it will take to keep up, and whether the numbers work. If you're weighing a property where construction costs or site limits will decide the value, let's connect and go through the numbers together.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.