Tyrone Legette has been in business in New Orleans for 20 years, but he’s finding new opportunities in the Baton Rouge market.
Last year, Legette, a former New Orleans Saints cornerback, opened a Save-A-Lot grocery store on 12200 Plank Road with the hope of bringing relief to an area identified as a food desert.
“There is nothing that I do in life that will not better a family, so the Save-A-Lot grocery store was another aspect of that,” Legette tells Business Report in the new Entrepreneur feature in the current issue.
But Legette’s goal isn’t just to provide families with affordable food. He also wants to help them find an affordable—yet quality—home.
He launched his construction company, Legette Construction, shortly after retiring from the Saints in 1998. Throughout his career, Legette has teamed up with almost a dozen nonprofits in the New Orleans area to build entire subdivisions aimed at first-time homebuyers. He operates his business on volume rather than making a profit on a handful of custom home projects.
Shortly after the August flood in Baton Rouge, Legette opened a Baton Rouge office of his construction company to take part in the Capital Region’s flood recovery efforts.
Having worked through the post-Katrina rebuilding effort in New Orleans, Legette knows the biggest challenge for Baton Rouge residents will be bridging in the gap between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance payments and the cost of rebuilding their homes. Legette is putting together a workforce-training program for youths aged 18 and older to help keep up with the work.
“Our job is to uplift the community with a hand up by giving young adults opportunities to do good in the community, while they can actually learn a trade and make some money at the same time,” he says.
Legette approaches each and every property he builds with the same goal: build a high-quality, affordable home.
“A lot of people just say affordable, but you’ve got to put the quality in there,” he says. “You want it to be just like any other house. Affordable just means it fits your budget. It doesn’t mean anything less than that.”
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