For sale: A purchase agreement has fallen through on the building at 4385 Government St. that formerly housed Sarki’s Oriental Rugs and Antique Gallery, which closed in late March after nearly 40 years in business. An investment group inked a deal on the building earlier this spring, after its owner lowered the asking price from nearly $700,000 to $430,000. But Mathew Laborde of Elifin Realty, who represented the potential buyer, says the cost to renovate the nearly 11,000-square-foot structure was higher than originally anticipated. Also, a lack of adequate parking posed additional challenges for the prospective buyers, who’d hoped to attract a restaurant tenant. “It will almost certainly require someone to make a deal with one of the neighboring property owners to acquire or lease space for parking,” says Laborde. “I think a deal can be made, but it just adds to the cost.”
Musical chairs: Gov. John Bel Edwards has appointed a former state lawmaker to temporarily fill a vacancy on Louisiana’s utility regulatory agency. The Associated Press reports Damon Baldone of Houma will serve on the five-member Public Service Commission until a special election is held. Baldone was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House for a decade from 2001 until 2012. He is a lawyer and businessman. Baldone will take over the seat vacated in May by Scott Angelle, who took a job leading the federal agency that regulates offshore oil and gas drilling. Edwards hasn’t yet set a special election date to fill the remaining portion of the term that ends on Dec. 31, 2018. However, Dr. Craig Greene, a Baton Rouge orthopaedic surgeon, jumped into the race Thursday, formally announcing his candidacy for the seat. The District 2 PSC seat represents all or part of 13 parishes across the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas.
Making waves: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, has for the third time detected gravitational waves—ripples in space and time. As was the case with the first two detections, the waves were generated when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole, LIGO says. The newly found black hole was formed by the merger and has a mass about 49 times that of the sun. The discovery fills in a gap between the masses of the two merged black holes previously detected, LIGO says. The most recent detection, made on Jan. 4, confirms that a new window in astronomy has been opened. LIGO observations are carried out by twin detectors, one of which is located in Livingston Parish. They are operated by Caltech and MIT with funding from the National Science Foundation. Read more.
