B.R. businessman buys majority of Orange Beach development

The owner of the retail complex at The Wharf, in Orange Beach, Ala., has purchased the remaining bank-owned real estate—including a 220-slip marina and the 10,000-seat amphitheater—for about $14 million, The (Mobile) Press-Register reports. Art Favre, president of Baton Rouge-based Performance Contractors, now owns the majority of the mixed-use development along the Intracoastal Waterway, including about 120 undeveloped acres. “We’ve been able to put the whole property under one ownership,” says Favre, who has also kept a home and a boat in Orange Beach since 1993. “We’re excited. We look at it as a long-term development and have a strategic plan for the next five to 10 years.” Developer AIG Baker opened the 222-acre Wharf in 2006, the first of several developments planned along the Intracoastal. But The Wharf struggled as the bottom fell out of both the real estate market and the economy. By the middle of 2010, BBVA Compass, Regions and JP Morgan Chase Bank all had liens on various parts of the property. Read the full story here.