After a year of on-and-off negotiations over the ownership of one of downtown’s best-known landmarks—the neon Coca-Cola sign atop the Richoux Building at the corner of Florida and North Third streets—the building’s owner and the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge are no closer to reaching an agreement than they were last May, when the dispute began.
The two sides have been trying to resolve the question of who owns the sign since last spring. Businessman Mike Crouch, who acquired the building in 2013, has said the historic sign came with the purchase and that he therefore is entitled to compensation for advertising space, insurance and maintenance. But the Arts Council maintains it was given the sign in a 2002 donation by a previous owner—and has the paperwork to prove it.
While the two sides have been negotiating, the sign has remained off except for two occasions—last summer’s Miss USA pageant and New Year’s Eve. For Coca Cola of Baton Rouge, which paid for a restoration of the sign in early 2014, the situation is frustrating.
“We’d love to see the sign lighted again,” Coca-Cola spokesperson Melanie Clark says. “It’s a landmark in downtown Baton Rouge and the fact that it’s not lit is sad to us, but we’re not in the middle of the dialogue so until it is resolved there is not much we can do.”
Coke still must complete minor work on the sign in connection with the restoration, but Clark says it doesn’t make any sense to do that “until we know what is happening with the sign.”
An attorney for the Arts Council, Scott Hensgens, says he has no new information about the status of negotiations. Crouch’s attorney, Jim Clary, says talks have not progressed because “the parties have been distracted by their own separate issues completely unrelated to the sign.”
Earlier this year, Arts Council CEO Eric Holowacz resigned after the board held a vote of no confidence. The council recently launched a nationwide search for its next leader.
Clary says he is confident the two sides will return to the bargaining table but says for the moment, “we each have had bigger fish to fry.”
—Stephanie Riegel
