Mike Wampold is flat out one of the most influential and important developers who calls Baton Rouge home. His talents, vision and willingness to take significant financial risks have given us a local landscape dotted with some pretty remarkable—and iconic—projects.
Just a few of his notable projects are the II City Plaza, The Watermark Baton Rouge hotel, the remade Bank One North Tower, the Crescent at University Lakes condos and the Renaissance Hotel, writes Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball in his newest opinion piece.
Pretty remarkable for a guy who, as an upstart in the mid-1980s, was teetering on the verge of being knocked out of business until landing a federal contract to build military housing at Fort Polk.
Wampold’s latest grand vision is Harveston, a mixed-use hamlet of a TND that’s dissected by S. Bluebonnet Boulevard and will cover a large swath of undeveloped land running along Nicholson Drive to the west, the back end of the Gardere neighborhood to the north, his under-development residential projects—The Preserve at Harveston and The Lakes at Harveston—to the east and, to the south, land that winds around another residential development before running into the University Club.
It all sounds glorious, Ball writes.
Yet as truly spectacular as Harveston might be, that shouldn’t mean Wampold gets to play by generous rules that are different from every other developer in town, Ball writes.
It’s one thing for a unanimous Metro Council to earlier this month approve the creation of the Harveston Economic Development District, Ball writes, but what is not so kosher is allowing Wampold to use the undedicated 2% parishwide sales tax generated within the district as incremental financing to offset a portion of the development’s expected $56.9 million in infrastructure costs.
Read Ball’s full column about Harveson and why the council’s decision is more than a little problematic. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
