The meal includes a $13 burger, crab cakes that are basically all crab and no cake, boudin spring rolls with sweet ponzu sauce, and cheesecake that we’re told was flown in from New York’s Carnegie Deli.
“This cake is better traveled than I am,” the waiter quips.
Believe it or not, this is lunch in Central. Specifically, at Stab’s Steak & Seafood, purportedly the first fine dining restaurant in this mostly rural “city,” incorporated in 2005.
Stab’s is one of nine businesses in The Village at Magnolia Square, the first official “traditional neighborhood development” to get off the ground in East Baton Rouge Parish. (Willow Grove, off Perkins Road, was approved before the TND designation existed.) In 2006 developers Jimmy Nunnally and Steele Pollard decided Magnolia Square could work in Central for three main reasons: good schools, good planning, and a new highway.
Today, the school system is among the highest scoring in the state, the master plan has been approved, and the Central Thruway is open. And those three factors will come up again and again as Central tries to figure out its future.
Magnolia Square is about half a mile from the thruway’s northern entrance. Pollard and Nunnally held an open house for the TND’s businesses to coincide with the highway’s July 11 ribbon cutting.
“When you cut that drive time down from most parts of Baton Rouge from 25-30 minutes to 10-12 minutes, it’s a big plus,” Nunnally says. “We’re looking for increases, both in our commercial and retail, as well as our residential.”
Open land and office space near the thruway are logical development targets. While Green Light Plan funds have been committed for years, delays in opening the highway led some potential buyers and sellers to take a wait-and-see approach.
But Ty Gose of NAI/Latter & Blum says that’s starting to change. He’s marketing 70 acres of land adjacent to the thruway and Greenwell Springs Road—some suitable for commercial development, some more appropriate for homes—and says inquiries have tripled since the new highway opened.
Gose says there’s a lot of interest in residential development. The problem has been that while politicians and residents push for low density and large lots, it’s hard to make the numbers work for that kind of subdivision at current asking prices.
“On the commercial side, a lot of developers haven’t quite figured out what type of demand there is,” Gose says. “Developers like Central as a market; they’re just trying to figure out what concepts can work.”
Wade Giles, president of the Central Economic Development Foundation, says Central’s political climate doesn’t welcome any development, commercial or residential, that’s economically feasible. Young families attracted by Central’s highly regarded school system should be a target market, yet many local leaders don’t want to allow the sort of starter homes those families can afford, he says.
Giles describes an “eyesore” of a building near the important intersection of Sullivan and Hooper that a commercial developer wanted to tear down. Planning and zoning approved rezoning the site, but the City Council shot down the change for no reason, he says. Giles ended up buying and cleaning up the building himself.
Growing communities everywhere face the same dilemma: Can you embrace growth, without losing what attracted people in the first place? Nunnally says Central’s master plan, which seeks to concentrate development in designated areas, will preserve the rural feel that current residents prefer.
“That’s what we’re trying to accomplish here [in Magnolia Square],” Nunnally says, while sitting at a second-floor table at Stab’s overlooking the “great lawn,” where the restaurant plans to host events once the weather cools. “You still feel like you’re in the country.”
But Giles complains the plan allows development in certain “isolated areas,” but doesn’t encourage it.
“The master plan is political as well,” he says. “Developers had no input.”
Giles also contends Central’s school board opposes any new housing, claiming new residents will overburden the school system. Board President Jim Gardner says Giles is exaggerating, but acknowledges the community’s preference for large lots and concern about rapid growth and low-cost homes.
“When the people move on to larger homes, those [starter homes] sometimes become rentals,” he says. “Over a relatively short period of time, they become very low-rent. It’s not the kind of thing people around here want in their community.”
Central’s city government lives on sales taxes, so Mayor Mac Watts was happy to see property owners putting land up for sale near the thruway almost immediately once it opened. He says his constituents are “cautious” about growth, but they’re “not panicking.”
“I’ve been here 69 years,” Watts likes to tell them. “I didn’t fuss when you came. Don’t fuss when they come.”
Central’s new design standards raise building costs, Watts admits, but he says Central doesn’t want developers who cut corners in any way. Fortunately, that’s not an issue with Magnolia Square.
“Man, that’s a fine development,” he says. “Any time someone comes in, that’s one of the places I show them.”
So far, 88 lots have been developed at Magnolia Square; 71 lots have been sold, and 48 houses by five different builders are complete or under construction. Nunnally says the TND is approved for up to 510 homes. He says the houses range in price from $285,000 to $1.4 million.
“Most of our buyers are sophisticated,” he says. “They’re either cash buyers or they have their financing already in place.”
While inching around the development in his Suburban, Nunnally shows off the wide sidewalks and New Orleans-style architecture, with double balconies and detailed wrought iron.
“At the end of the day, people are just sitting out in their rocking chairs with a glass of wine, talking to their neighbors, and people are walking on the sidewalks,” he says. “It just works if you build it like this.”
Nunnally is looking hard now for a coffee shop and a specialty grocer. Long term, he can imagine townhomes or assisted-living homes, all built to the same standards. And why not? In Central, he says, the market’s wide open.
