More than four months after Goldman Sachs Bank took nearly 30 acres of property along Nicholson Drive that Michel Moreno and his sister, Dalis Waguespack, had hoped to turn into a mixed-use development called the River District, the Lafayette oil man is negotiating with the bank to try to get the property back, according to a Moreno associate.
Carrol Castille, a Carencro businessman and developer who purchased 11.5 acres of the Nicholson Drive property from Moreno in October 2016 before the foreclosure, says talks are underway between Moreno and the bank, though he does not know the status.
“It’s not over,” Castille says. “I think it is going to come back. There are some negotiations between Mike and Goldman. He is trying to get it back and do the right thing.”
Goldman Sachs bought the property at a Feb. 1 auction, more than 18 months after suing Moreno for defaulting on a $52.4 million loan that, in part, had financed the purchase of the Nicholson Drive property. There were no other bidders.
Castille says the bank was asking too much for the property at the auction and, in his opinion, should have tried to sell it as separate parcels.
“They lumped it all together and it was just too much,” he says.
Moreno acquired the property in 50 separate transactions over several years in the mid-2000s, ultimately paying a total of $23 million or nearly $18 per square foot, which far exceeded the market rate at the time.
Castille declines to say how much he paid for the 11.5 acres he bought from Moreno last fall. Court documents list the sale price as $100 and other valuable considerations. The property is located about two blocks north of LSU’s Nicholson Gateway development, currently under construction, and straddles both sides of Nicholson Drive. Castille says the property consists mostly of small houses and a church.
He says he has no plans to develop the property for now and will wait and see what happens with the rest of the former River District site before deciding what to do with his land.
“I’m just sitting on it,” he says. “Obviously, I could develop it. I’ve had numerous calls from hotels and restaurants but I think it needs to be developed as one big unit like we originally had planned. That would be in the best interest of everybody.”
—Stephanie Riegel
