On the road again: Team Toyota has reopened its dealership at 1788 O’Neal Lane after being temporarily closed for renovations due to the August flood. A grand reopening event took place on Tuesday. According to a news release, the dealership took on four to five feet of water and lost more than 400 new and certified vehicles to the flood. The dealership was able to begin reselling vehicles about a week after the flood by setting up makeshift temporary sales office, and it had removed all flooded vehicles from the site within three weeks of the flood. The dealership says it has now fully recovered, adding the service center is also operating at full capacity.
Word on the street: CenturyLink and Louisiana’s economic officials are not commenting on a report from The Wall Street Journal that the Monroe-based company—the largest publicly company headquartered in the state—is in advanced merger talks with Colorado-based Level 3 Communications. The News-Star reports that LED Secretary Don Pierson is remaining tight-lipped about the possible merger, as is CenturyLink spokesperson Annmarie Sartor. “No comment,” Pierson told the media network when asked if he was aware of the reported merger. It’s unclear which company would be the acquirer. Both companies have been aggressively grown through acquisitions. CenturyLink employs 2,800 workers in Louisiana and has an annual payroll of $172 million. Level 3, with a market value of $16.8 billion, is slightly larger than CenturyLink, which has a market value of $15.2 billion. Read the full story.
Time to move on: James L. Llorens, president of the Cristo Rey Baton Rouge Franciscan High School, will retire at the end of the year. John Bennett, former principal of St. Aloysius Catholic School and current Cristo Rey board member, will serve as the private Catholic school’s interim president while a national search for the new president is conducted. Llorens is the former chancellor of Southern University. One year after the Southern University Board of Supervisors voted not to renew Llorens’ contract, he was picked to lead a feasibility study to determine if Baton Rouge had the resources to support the Cristo Rey education model and its Corporate Work Study Program, and was later selected to be president of the school. The school opened in June but was damaged during the August flood. It has temporarily relocated to the Bon Carre Business Center.
