Donnie Jarreau is finalizing plans for a new garden-style office park that will be located on Perkins Road, just east of Pecue Lane and across from The Royal Standard.
The development will consist of eight pad sites for buildings measuring roughly 2,000 to 5,000 square feet each. Jarreau is building two of the buildings and plans to retain one for his office. The others will likely be for retail use, one of which Jarreau says will probably be for a fitness club.
Two other sites are under contract to a private developer. The remaining four sites are for sale. Jarreau is asking for $75 per square foot.
Jarreau acquired the 5.5-acre property last August for $575,000 from its longtime owners, the Kearns family. He says the price was too good to pass up.
Though the Baton Rouge office market has softened over the past year with the increase in new inventory downtown and on Jefferson Highway, Jarreau believes there is always demand for garden-style office space.
“Garden-style is very different than multi-story, multi-tenant buildings,” he says. “Garden-style does well regardless of the economy.”
The high growth, affluent southeastern portion of the parish is also an attractive location for an investment, he says. Plans are in the works for a new Interstate 10 exchange at Pecue Lane, which will only hasten development in the area in the years to come.
“We may be a little early, but it’s coming,” he says. “The demographics are great.”
Jarreau says he’s still working on a name and particular architectural style for the office park. He hopes to begin construction in the next 90 to 120 days.
