Abandoned fourplex apartment buildings line the intersection of Mariner and East Wadsworth drives, across from the Gardere Meat Market, including one with graffiti spray-painted on the front. The so-called Evangeline Estates appear to be long vacant, although a property owner did not share the story of when the spirit of the buildings departed, leaving behind blighted property.
Less than a mile southwest down Gardere Lane is a more successful housing development, the upscale Indigo Park Apartment Homes, at Nicholson Drive. The enclave of 330 cream-color, condominium-style units bills itself as “where real life meets easy street” and boasts a resort-style pool, a cabana and a location that is minutes from LSU and downtown.
Pinnacle Entertainment’s planned casino resort on River Road will bring another building block of change to the gentrifying zone. And the LSU South Campus on GSRI Avenue could dramatically expand its research-park mission and include a gateway entrance at Nicholson Drive.
Whether poorer residents of rundown apartments to the northeast see much benefit from the progress at the edges of the area, homeowners and concerned property owners, on the other hand, hope growing development offsets crimes such as drug dealing, stolen goods fencing and even prostitution.
“There’s a huge amount of positive energy that has been directed toward the Gardere neighborhood,” including community policing and volunteer groups, says Carlos Padial Jr., a former resident and current apartment landlord. “The baseball field, that’s an exceptional investment right in the middle of the neighborhood.”
Indeed, many people have championed the Cypress Mounds Baseball Complex of seven fields on Gardere Lane near GSRI Avenue, along with the Hardt of Champion baseball practice facility at Burbank Drive and Gardere.
“Any new development like that, they welcome,” says state Rep. Franklin Foil, a Republican whose District 70 includes Gardere. “They feel that the newer developments will raise the value of the land in that area, which will eventually get rid of some of these apartment complexes that are not kept up and have this problem with unruly tenants and garbage that is left out.”
Absentee landlords have let such problems become entrenched at the apartments, which led the neighborhood’s Hermitage and Cross Creek Homeowners Association to lobby for and receive its own crime prevention district last year, separate from the South Burbank Crime Prevention and Development District.
“Crime is going down,” Foil says. “Not only is the area building up, there’s a nice new baseball complex and a sheriff’s substation. Sheriff [Sid] Gautreaux is working to have a bigger presence there. Things are getting better.”
Padial says Gardere was a much different place in the early 1980s, when he estimates 90% of apartment dwellers were LSU and Southern University students. “It was a wonderful place to live,” he says.
When real estate crashed in 1986 and the government instituted big depreciation tax breaks, slumlords brought down the neighborhood. That didn’t stop Padial from investing in a fourplex in 1988 and living there for eight years. He has put money into his property and been frustrated when other owners balk at a unified effort to better the area.
As a result, values fell—almost overnight, Padial says. A building that was worth $250,000 in 1981 could be had for $81,000 in 1988. “The next one I bought for $60,000,” he says. “I bought another for $40,000 from the RTC [Resolution Trust Corp., a federal real estate liquidation agency].”
Cheryl Wyatt, a sales agent with C.J. Brown Realtors in Prairieville, recently started housing listings in the neighborhood. “It’s a very hard area to sell in,” she says, noting her predecessor’s luck with a Longwood View Avenue listing. “The other agent, she’s had to reduce the price just in hopes of getting some interest in the property.
“More than likely, it’s going to be an investor who wants to come in and does not mind putting some money into the property in hopes of getting a renter, versus someone who actually wants to use it as a residence.”
Finding qualified buyers can be a challenge in a distressed neighborhood, as evidenced by the Katrina cottages of Hidden Cove, a speculative, 42-unit development at the south edge of Gardere. Several of the completed, two-story homes are vacant at the south end of Pascagoula Drive. Funding for the development, handled by Cypress Realty Partners, came through the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
By contrast, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge, which built Cross Creek and Hidden Cove homes and is now working on houses in the neighboring Rosewood subdivision, says the agency does not start building until it has an owner in mind.
Wyatt says development has given local residents a greater sense of security. “For many years, it had a reputation as a high-crime, poverty-concentrated area. The police presence has made a huge difference.”
Commercial Realty, a New Orleans corporate firm, is selling retail pads along Nicholson and Gardere that will abut Indigo Park. Keith Adler, a retail sales associate for the company, says the apartment complex plans to expand by about 75 units in part to house casino and construction employees. That leaves about six or seven of the 10 vacant acres at the intersection for service-style businesses.
“Clearly that property has increased in value based on that [Pinnacle] property alone,” he says. “We’ve been in a holding pattern to see if and when the casino is actually going to move forward. It seems like we’ve jumped that hurdle now.”
The $250 million project is slated to include a gambling boat, a 100-room hotel, office and retail space, and 240 townhomes. On the other side of the neighborhood, at Bluebonnet Boulevard and Burbank Drive, a Walmart Supercenter is planned to open in three years, and land has been cleared across the street from that for even more retail.
Jeff Stevens is president of UDC Residential, part of UDC Global, which owns most of Indigo Park. The Texas businessman says he plans to add mostly one-bedroom units to the complex, which was designed as condos and has a higher mix of two- and three-bedrooms. “We have a nice, stable residency from the petroleum industry and the medical industry in Baton Rouge that, as you know, continues to grow,” he says.
“As users discover the growth in this area, and once the casino breaks ground, that will get people confidence,” he says.
Padial hopes to have a community center built in Gardere to gather interested charitable groups and residents—“the little sideline heroes,” he says—to unify their efforts to improve the neighborhood and take advantage of the investment attention.
“The vacant buildings, they’re turning around faster. Whenever you have a vacant building in this market, it makes it very easy for criminals to hide out.” he says. “Gardere is continually getting better.”
