Sprouting up: Hotel Indigo announced today it has started a rooftop garden which will now feature bell peppers, jalapeños, habaneros and tomatoes. Guests of the 93-room boutique hotel can look out over the second floor roof and see the visual green space, which was started to provide fresh, locally owned produce for the hotel’s King Bar & Bistro. Fresh mint, oregano, cilantro, parsley and rosemary have been grown there, according to a news release. The garden was created to educate and promote environmentally conscious practices in-house and in downtown Baton Rouge. “When we repurposed 200 Convention St. to Hotel Indigo Baton Rouge we could not qualify for Leadership Energy & Environmental Design Certification due to the historical makeup of the building, but we could ‘grow green’ and the rooftop garden idea was formed,” Gayle Carnahan, founder and CEO of Nuvieux Hospitality Management, which manages the hotel, says in a statement.
Counterpunch: State Treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate John Kennedy will give the Republican response tonight to Gov. John Bel Edwards’ televised address, Kennedy announced in a news release. Kennedy will speak for five minutes, beginning just after 6:43 p.m., from WVLA-TV in Baton Rouge. “It is clear to me that we have a spending problem. We should not burden our hardworking families with higher taxes. When the state is spending $1 million to install statues at LSU Medical Center instead of training doctors, it’s clear that our priorities are distorted,” Kennedy says. Edwards will speak to Louisiana residents about the state’s bleak financial condition via a televised addressed at 6:30 p.m. on Louisiana Public Broadcasting and major stations throughout Louisiana.
Wrapping up: The Commerce Building in downtown Baton Rouge will open its doors and start moving residents as early as March 30, it was announced during a report to the Downtown Development District Commission today. Rent for residences will start at $1,175 per month. Michael Lang, director of real estate development for Key Real Estate Co., says construction on the Commerce Building, which has been transformed into a mixed-use development, is tentatively slated to wrap up within the “next 30-ish days.” A website for the building, detailing different floor plans, recently launched. Floor plans can be downloaded when pre-leasing begins for each floor. An open house took place earlier today. Magpie Café and Gaudet Bros.+ McCrory’s, a barbershop, are two announced commercial tenants in the building.
