Originally published in Baton Rouge Business Report
Commercial and residential real estate giant NAI/Latter & Blum will be moving its Baton Rouge headquarters to Dantin Bruce Development’s new Offices at City Farm office park on Jefferson Highway near Towne Center. It will take about eight to nine months for the build-out on the 18,500-square-foot building that is in the design phase and is scheduled to break ground in November.
NAI/Latter & Blum’s director of commercial sales and leasing in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Karl Landreneau, says the new office park’s location was among the reasons it was attracted to the site.
“We think it’s a centralized location, one of the class A locations in the city, and quite frankly our brokerage company is growing and outgrew our current location,” Landreneau says, adding the new location will be about 50% larger than the company’s current headquarters located at 10455 Jefferson Hwy.
The company has been searching for a new headquarters space for about a year and wanted a new development, not something that required renovations, Landreneau says. The new Jefferson Highway location is a perfect fit, he notes, because of its proximity to interstates 10 and 12, as well as Airline Highway.
NAI/Latter & Blum will occupy about 15,700 square feet in the building, which leaves about 2,800 square feet that will be leased out for retail or office space, says Brian Dantin, who is developing the park with business partner Ross Bruce.
The firm’s new building is one of two in the office park that is under contract, with the other being for Cypress Title, a commercial and residential title company currently located at 17170 Perkins Road, near the Highland Road intersection. Cypress Title’s 5,800-square-foot building should be finished in mid-October, says Dantin.
Johnny McKay, an attorney and one of the owners of Cypress Title, says one of the factors in the decision to move was the fact that there are no other title firms in that area. The owners had been casually looking for a new space for three years after outgrowing the company’s current location, he says.
Dantin says a lease will also be finalized soon with a third company on a 5,000-square-foot space adjacent to the Cypress Title building.
“So far, it has kind of sold itself,” Dantin says of the new development.
Open space in the rear of the development is being leased for about $20 per square foot, while the open space in the NAI/Latter & Blum building is being marketed at about $25 per square foot. Those prices could change depending on the type of company and the build-out, Dantin says.
The design of the buildings by local architecture firm Ritter Maher is what Dantin calls a “modern farmhouse design,” with metal roofs, farmhouse-type light fixtures, barn doors and open space with natural lighting. A planned second phase of the project will feature another three to four buildings totaling about 30,000 square feet. All the locations are build-to-suit.