The state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority will get a break on its rent when it moves into its new offices in the Water Campus on August 1.
A spokesman for the agency confirms that Commercial Properties Realty Trust—the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s real estate company that is developing the campus—has agreed to waive the CPRA’s $102,000 monthly lease payment for five months, which will result in a savings of some $510,000 this calendar year.
Currently, the CPRA pays $26.25 per square foot for the 35,861 square feet of usable space it leases in Mike Wampold’s Riverside North Tower downtown. That figure includes 85 parking spaces and totals about $941,341 a year.
When the agency moves to the Water Campus in August, it will lease 41,490 square feet of usable space, including 137 parking spaces, at a rate of $29.50 per square foot, or about $1.22 million. However, the first lease payment will not be due until January. That rate will increase every two years to $32.50 per square foot in 2024, at which time the annual lease will total $1.35 million.
The break in rent will help alleviate concerns raised earlier this year, when some lawmakers began questioning why agencies in a cash-strapped state were spending more than necessary leasing posh private office space.
At the time, CPRA Director Johnny Bradberry told Daily Report the agency needs to be in the Water Campus because of the potential synergies that will develop with other businesses and entities focused on coastal and deltaic studies.
But Bradberry also acknowledged the lease rates were considerably higher than what the agency had been paying and said he was interested in revisiting the terms of the lease, which was signed during the Jindal administration.
“Efficiency and cost effectiveness are extremely high priorities for this administration,” Bradberry said in March. “I am seriously and personally committed to reviewing this and all contracts to assure they are the wisest expenditure of our funds and are in the best interest of CPRA and the state.”
Bradberry was unavailable for comment today, but his spokesman Chuck Perrodin says the secretary is pleased with the new deal.
“Mr. Bradberry and the new administration have been able to work this as the best deal we can get,” he says.
A spokeswoman for Commercial Properties declines to comment.
At $29.50 per square foot, the CPRA building will be one of the most expensive in the downtown market, second only to the IBM building, which also was developed by Commercial Properties. Lease rates in City Plaza II, downtown’s third-newest building, average $28.50 per square foot. Without those buildings, the average lease rate of downtown office space is around $20 per square foot.
—Stephanie Riegel
