Nearly a year after plans for the Water Campus were announced, a groundbreaking is near on the first building that would rise at the nearly 30-acre campus situated along the Mississippi River near downtown.
Construction of the first building will begin in late winter or early spring of next year, says Mukul Verma with the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. According to records recently filed with the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court, 150 Terrace LLC paid $600,000 for a two-acre lot on which to erect the building. Verma says the deal signals the transfer of the property from BRAF—a lead agency on the Water Campus project—to its real estate arm, Commercial Properties Realty Trust, which is the entity behind 150 Terrace.
The two-acre tract is a part of a little more than three acres BRAF bought in May from the East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority for $600,000. The Metro Council Zoning board approved plans to rezone the two-acre lot from residential use to commercial at its November meeting. The first building on the Water Campus is to measure four stories and about 65,000 square feet. It will house the offices of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
The first phase of development of the Water Campus also calls for construction of offices on the Old City Dock for the Water Institute of the Gulf, as well as a building that would house a lab designed to study and model the Mississippi River. Verma says BRAF has donated about an acre of land to LSU for the lab. Plans for those buildings have yet to move through the Planning Commission process.
Check out a Business Report cover story on the Water Campus from last December, when the project was announced. —Kelly Connelly
