The owner of the historic Prince Apartments at North Boulevard and Napoleon Street downtown is converting the eight-unit building into condominiums.
New Orleans attorney and investor Tony Gelderman, who acquired the 88-year-old building shortly before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, spent more than $1 million renovating the property in 2011 and has been leasing the updated units as apartments ever since.
In response to market demand, however, Gelderman recently decided to convert the units to condos, according to Andrew Chidlow of Burns & Co., who is the listing agent for the units.
“He saw the potential for condos downtown,” Chidlow says. “There’s a need for condos and there just aren’t many of them.”
Prices for the four one-bedroom units, which average around 800 square feet, will start at $185,000. Prices for the four two-bedroom units, which are slightly more than 1,000 square feet, start at $227,000.
Chidlow says potential buyers are young professionals and also empty nesters, who want to be in the middle of the action downtown but are ready to downsize.
The Prince Apartments totals 9,000 square feet and was designed by Baton Rouge architect Lewis Grosz. The building was completed in 1930 and is one of the few examples in Baton Rouge of Art Deco architecture, according to the Downtown Development District. Both its distinct exterior—with its elongated, rounded bays—and interior exemplify the style of that era, with its emphasis on modernism and mechanization.
