Lamar-Dixon on the market

The Ascension Parish Council is meeting tonight to discuss purchasing the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, but two local Realtors are already marketing the property to private investors. Ty Gose and Tony DeMarco with NAI/Latter & Blum have been selected by the Lamar-Dixon Expo Foundation to market the property. Gose says the asking price for the 240-acre site, which includes 500,000 square feet of buildings, is confidential. But he says it’s more than the $7.5 million the parish wants to pay for the site. “This property costs $55 million to build,” he says. The foundation is looking for the best possible price for the facility, DeMarco says, and that could involve retrofitting the buildings for light industrial use and marketing its proximity to rail lines and highways.—Timothy Boone