Architect Trey Trahan has shelved his ambitious plans to develop a 24-story pencil-shaped building of luxury condominiums in downtown Baton Rouge.
Trahan, who first announced his idea last October, says plans fell through because of his inability to reach a deal with the owners of the Baton Rouge Water Company to acquire a small parcel the company owns adjacent to the 2,200-square-foot tract behind Lafayette Park and across from the Old State Capitol grounds on which he had hoped to develop his building.
After talking to several potential buyers for the condos, which would have had a price tag of between $2 million and $2.5 million, Trahan says he realized he needed the additional space to build out more parking spaces than he had originally planned.
“The people who were interested in the units said at that price point they needed two car spaces per unit so we looked at trying expand our plans for the parking garage,” says Trahan, whose original plans called for just one parking space per unit. “The Owens family (who own Baton Rouge Water Co.) was very nice but said they were not interested in selling.”
Without the additional space, Trahan says the project—which, admittedly was something of a longshot for Baton Rouge—is effectively dead, at least for now.
“These things only happen in a city where the wealthy, the leadership, says let’s do this,” he says. “I don’t think there is a strong enough desire for that to happen here.”
While Trahan’s plans won’t materialize in Baton Rouge, his drawings for the sleek, glass building, which include 10-foot, floor-to-ceiling, exterior glass walls on three of the building’s four sides, caught the eye of a developer in Toronto, who is interested in building such a structure in that city’s trendy Waterloo district.
Trahan is traveling to Canada today to meet with the developer and discuss his plans.
