More than a decade ago, the Metro Council approved plans to close the central wastewater treatment plant on Nicholson Drive near downtown and redirect flow to the south treatment plant on Gardere Lane, which was already undergoing an extensive upgrade as part of the EBR Sanitary Sewer Overflow program.
The plan added some $20 million to the already escalating cost of the EBR SSO, which had been underway at that point for several years. But proponents argued that taking the outdated central plant out of commission would ultimately make the system more efficient and save money in the long run.
What’s more, it would make available for redevelopment some 20 acres on Nicholson Drive in the middle of Old South Baton Rouge, which, at the time, seemed like it would be an easy sell. Lafayette oilman Michael Moreno had already acquired nearly 35 acres of Nicholson Drive real estate at top-dollar prices and had ambitious plans to redevelop the entire area into a “River District” with retail, residential and entertainment venues.
But 11 years later—though the central plant has been decommissioned and the large, white pipes that once carried outflow over the levee and into the river have been removed—the property sits vacant and no plans are on the horizon to do anything with it.
“The longer term plan would be to demolish the plant and potentially repurpose or sell the lot,” says city-parish Chief Administrative Officer Kelvin Hill. “But short term we have no major plans for it.”
Hill, who notes that the previous plans were done under the previous mayoral administration, says the city-parish would like to engage a private partner. Ideally, he says, a company would come in and remove the equipment in return for the scrap metal and components.
But at an estimated cost of between $1 million and $2 million, the demo work is too expensive for the city to undertake on its own, he says.
Real estate brokers says part of the challenge the city-parish faces is the lack of demand for Nicholson Drive property, which looked so promising a decade ago.
Though the Water Campus has since been developed by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, with considerable help from state and federal subsidies, Moreno defaulted on his River District property, which went back to the lender and has been on the market now for three years.
Plans for a Nicholson Drive tram that would have connected LSU to downtown have also fallen through, as the Broome administration decided not to pursue federal funding for the initiative.
And even a new office building developed on the site of the former prince Murat Hotel has sat vacant, unable to be leased or sold, since its completion in early 2018.
Not to say Nicholson Drive is not still ripe for redevelopment, only that a 20-acre former sewerage treatment plant site isn’t likely to be in high demand anytime soon.
“Moreno was the one driving that train,” commercial broker Matthew Laborde of Elifin Realty says. “Now that his plans have fallen through, there’s a lot of land along Nicholson for sale.”
