A deal is in the works to sell Bon Carré Business Center, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal.
Though details are sketchy, sources say an out-of-state investor group has signed a purchase agreement for the 71,000-square-foot office park on Florida Boulevard and is expected to close the sale within the next 30-60 days.
Real estate broker Jessie Babcock with Beau Box Commercial Real Estate, who has been marketing the property for sale or lease, did not return calls and emails seeking comment.
But several tenants of the center—including Genevieve Silverman at the Louisiana Business and Technology Park and John Engquist of H&E—confirm they have received estoppel letters in recent weeks.
Estoppel letters, which generally indicate a sale is imminent, give the prospective buyer information about a property’s leases and about the terms of existing lessor-lessee relationships.
While the pending deal is being kept under wraps for now, it is no secret that Bon Carré—built in the 1960s as the Bon Marche Shopping Center—is for sale.
Several national brokerage firms have listed it for sale over the past five years and twice, in November 2018 and April 2019, it was offered for sale in online auctions. Neither auction, however—the second of which had a minimum bid of just $6 million—generated a bid that the center’s owner was willing to accept.
The owner—technically, U.S Bank National Association—is actually a trustee for Bon Carré’s lenders, an out-of-state real estate investment group. The trustee acquired the center through a U.S. Marshals Service sale in 2018, not long after the previous owner, Commercial Properties Realty Trust, defaulted on its $36.1 million mortgage.
CPRT, the real estate arm of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, had acquired Bon Carré in the early 2000s, investing in the center as a way to help redevelop the blighted area. But in the years leading up to its default, CPRT had begun losing money on the center.
Before walking away from its nonrecourse loan on the property, CPRT also had tried to sell Bon Carré, listing it for sale in 2016 with Colliers. The listing netted only one offer, however—$28 million, which might seem attractive now but at the time was $8 million less than CPRT’s debt on the property.
Currently, occupancy at the center is around 60%, down from a high of 90% in 2011.
