Aside from Gov. Bobby Jindal making his presidential bid official this week and historic rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage, plenty of big local stories made headlines in Daily Report this week.
The week kicked off with news of East Baton Rouge Parish’s largest home sale ever. As first reported by Daily Report, Paula Pennington de la Bretonne’s estate at 11001 Highland Road sold for $6 million after more than two and a half years on the market.
Dr. Andre Bruni and his wife, Dr. Jessica Bruni—who together own Sensible Dental Family Dentistry—acquired the property, which sits on 12.5 rolling acres in one of Baton Rouge’s most desirable locations. Though the deal marks the highest priced residential sale ever in the local market, the sale price is just one third of the $18 million the home was listed for when it went on the market in October 2012. The asking price was later reduced to $12 million.
Meanwhile, over at City Hall on Wednesday, an early adjournment the Metro Council due to a lack of a quorum stalled a number of significant projects, including the creation of a special taxing district to help finance construction of a new downtown Courtyard Marriott.
Another item delayed was the appropriation of $1 million in traffic impact fees that will help fund the environmental and planning phase of the proposed Nicholson corridor streetcar. The city-parish received a $1.76 million federal TIGER grant earlier this year to begin planning for the streetcar along three miles of Nicholson Drive between the LSU campus and downtown, and it is required to put up $1 million in matching funds.
Also this week, the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors reported that for the second straight month, home sales in the eight-parish Capital Region fell in May, compared to the same month last year. Home sales were down 7.6% in May.
