Lucas Firmin Pools, a high-end residential and commercial pool-building company, is the newest tenant of the building at 930 Scenic Hwy.
“I love old buildings and driving around one weekend, I saw this one,” says the owner of Lucas Firmin. “It’s perfect for us, and more room than we need. And this is the cheapest price per square foot.”
As Business Report details in a feature from its current issue, Firmin’s new shop is located in an area not far from where crime stories are regularly featured on the nightly news. But the area is showing signs of a resurgence as young business owners invest in a section of the city that was recently rechristened as “Downtown East.”
“Downtown East” is located between Mid City and downtown Baton Rouge. Its perimeters are fuzzy at best, but it’s roughly bordered to the north and west by Interstate 110, to the east by 22nd Street and to the south by Government Street.
Commercially, it’s home to a plethora of nonprofits, a few churches and small businesses. It’s a hodgepodge of new life and old blight, high crime rates and low employment rates. According to the most recent data available from the U.S. Census, the median household income in the area—primarily located in the 70802 ZIP code—was $26,431 and the unemployment rate was 13.4% in 2014.
Lucas Firmin is among a number of business owners who are drawn to Downtown East because real estate is cheap and widely available. They are starting to discover the old and restore it into new. It is gentrification in its purest form, and exciting to be part of, business owners say.
Read the full story which includes a map of the progress in “Downtown East.”
