Highest bidder: CivicSource.com is holding an adjudicated property sale today for 59 properties throughout East Baton Rouge Parish. The sale concludes at 8 p.m. This is the third adjudicated property sale for CivicSource.com featuring property in East Baton Rouge Parish, following 18 properties sold during auctions in May and June. The properties up for sale have been adjudicated for more than five years. An interested party must put down an $850 deposit and have no past owners come forward to pay the delinquent taxes before the property is put up for auction. Thirty-eight properties in six other parishes are also up for auction today. The winners receive full ownership of the property plus title insurance.
Next big thing: Cupcake Allie, The Cajun Spoon and food-delivery startup Waitr will take the floor July 28 in Kean Miller’s Conference Center to impress three culinary entrepreneurs at the next iteration of PitchBR. The winner will go on to the final competition in November during Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week for a chance at a $250,000 investment from Innovation Catalyst. The judges will be James Jacobs Jr., the co-owner of Magpie Café who will be looking for strong grassroots marketability; Brandon Landry, co-founder of Walk-On’s who is looking for a company with potential large-scale success; and Richard Hanley, founder of Hanley Dressings who is looking for a product or service consumers will love. The event begins at 5 p.m. and pitches begin at 5:30 p.m.
Moving back: Chiquita Brands International Inc. is returning its shipping operations to Gulfport, Mississippi, from the Port of New Orleans. The Associated Press reports Chiquita will employ 10 management and operations personnel, while providing local longshoremen additional hours lost when, after 40 years in Gulfport, the company relocated its shipping operations to New Orleans in 2014. The Port of New Orleans said in statement the deal to bring Chiquita back to New Orleans was struck before the company was sold to the Cutrale-Safra Groups in 2015. Figures from the port show 244,681 tons of bananas were shipped through New Orleans last year, accounting for 2.5% of total general cargo and 4.8% of its container tonnage. The Associated Press has the full story.
