Business executive and political activist Lane Grigsby and three lobbyists who work with him—Dan Juneau, Ginger Sawyer and Michael Calabrese—have formed a political action committee to raise money for candidates in the upcoming school board elections.
The PAC, which is called Better Schools, Better Futures, was incorporated Aug. 1 and is already raising money, though Grigsby can’t say for sure how much just yet. “Money is not going to be a problem,” he tells Daily Report. “We already have lots of commitments. We just needed to create the vehicle to gather the funds. This is the vehicle.”
Also this week, Metro Councilman, attorney and businessman John Delgado announced he’s opening a second downtown bar in the space at 174 South Boulevard formerly occupied by Mud and Water, which closed earlier this year.
The new bar, which Delgado is opening with business partner Andrew Bayard, will be called Brickyard South because its location, near River Road in the shadows of the Mississippi River bridge, is at the intersection of South Boulevard and Brickyard Street.
“It’s going to be fun, eclectic and unpretentious,” Delgado tells Daily Report. “This is not going to be the kind of place for Prohibition-era cocktails. It’s just a place to have a drink and a good time.” Delgado, along with Bayard, also owns Huey’s on Third Street downtown.
Other stories making headlines in Daily Report this week include:
• Embattled LSU Alumni Association President and CEO Charlie Roberts has taken annual leave from his position in the wake of a lawsuit and alleged sex scandal. Roberts filed for leave this morning, just one day after his attorney, Mary Olive Pierson, said he would not be resigning from the position he has held for decades.
• After losing his lawsuit challenging the city’s annexations of portions of the Mall of Louisiana, two hospitals and a subdivision, Woody Jenkins says he will appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, attorney Mary Olive Pierson, who represents the city in the annexation suit, says more annexation petitions are expected.
• Samuel Sanders, executive director of the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance, says the alliance is in ongoing conversations with Catholic High School about the future of the Westmoreland Village Shopping Center. “We understand from their end that they are planning to put something out to invite developers to come out with their ideas,” Sanders says.
• Williamson, Fontenot & Campbell LLC, a local law firm with offices downtown, expects to break ground on a renovation project for a new office space off Nicholson Drive by the end of the year, says Rob Campbell, a partner with the firm. “We think that area is really going to blow up,” Campbell says of the Nicholson corridor. “It could be one year, it could be 20, but we want to be a part of it.”
• Triumph Kitchen, a nonprofit that trains at-risk youth in the culinary and hospitality industry, is moving from its current location downtown at 320 Third St. to a new location at 1120 Government St., says founder Chris Wadsworth, who also tells Daily Report he has plans for a new restaurant. “I’m planning to open a full-blown restaurant within the next 18 months. I don’t know where it will be, but we’re excited, and we have it on the books.”
• Audubon Parc, a new subdivision planned for Tiger Bend Road, is expected to break ground between late October and November. The subdivision’s Planning Commission application includes plans for 47 residential lots, each of which average about 8,000 square feet.
• A vacant 5-acre tract in the Bass Pro Shops development in Denham Springs will soon be home to a 47,000-square-foot retail center which will house national chain Quaker Steak and Lube, a boutique dress shop, a cell phone service provider and a fitness concept.
• A 1.3-acre residential tract that ignited a firestorm of controversy two years ago among Southdowns residents is on the market for $975,000. The Skillman property—which includes a 6,000-square-foot main house, 4,800-square-foot guesthouse, a swimming pool and surrounding yard with 500-year-old live oak trees—was at the center of a dispute in 2012, after Skillman applied for a rezoning petition in hopes of selling the property to a mental health practice.
• Officials from the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans announced that it, along with the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport and the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, are the recipients of a five-year, $5.6 million National Cancer Institute grant to create an NCI Community Oncology Research Program. The program will connect a network of clinical sites offering cutting-edge advanced clinical trials in cancer care to patients throughout the Louisiana and southern Mississippi region.
• Two key downtown thoroughfares are getting a makeover that will transform them from one-way to two-way streets, a move that is expected to improve traffic flow downtown and make it easier to access the River Center Parking Garage. The streets are St. Ferdinand Street—which is one-way heading south and becomes Highland Road south of Interstate 10—and St. Louis Street, which is one-way heading north and becomes Nicholson Drive south of Interstate 10.
• Baton Rouge-based James Construction Group—which has offices throughout Florida, Louisiana and Texas—began construction this week on a $6.5 million, 35,700-square-foot office building at 18484 Petroleum Drive, which will serve as its new headquarters starting in April 2015, says Don Hoon, who’s managing the project.
• CVS has sold its newest location in Baton Rouge, at 9326 Burbank Drive near Gardere Lane, to a real estate investment trust in Arizona for $4.39 million.
• The Times-Picayune has announced it will publish two extra printed editions per week during the upcoming football and holiday shopping seasons. In a letter to readers, published online on NOLA.com Saturday and on the front page of the printed, Sunday edition of The Times-Picayune, the paper announced that as of Sept. 6 it will begin offering “bonus editions” on Mondays and Saturdays to its three-day, home-delivery subscribers at no additional cost.
• After several years of establishing a positive trajectory for good government, Gov. Bobby Jindal is putting a question mark on his legacy with his overreach on the issue of Common Core standards in education, says Barry Erwin, president and CEO of the Council for a Better Louisiana, who spoke at this week’s Rotary Club of Baton Rouge luncheon.
• Gov. Bobby Jindal‘s opposition notwithstanding, Louisiana students will be taught according to Common Core standards, says Chas Roemer, president of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who spoke to the Baton Rouge Press Club this week. The question is how those students will be tested, and Roemer said he hopes the answer will be clear after an Aug. 18 court date.
