Will include houses, movie theater and Y: Construction of Americana, a 420-acre TND off E. Mt. Pleasant-Zachary Road, could start in early 2012. Charles Landry, the attorney representing Americana, says financing isn’t an issue for the first phase of the development, which will include a little more than 100 homes, a 10-screen movie theater and a 26,000-square-foot YMCA branch. The issues involve getting about 413 acres of the development annexed into Zachary and city officials’ approval of the zoning changes. Plans are for a 15-year build-out, eventually completing a community with between 1,500 to 1,800 homes and 500,000 square feet of commercial space.
La. ranks near middle of the pack for seized properties: The number of Louisiana homeowners being hit by foreclosure actions is on the rise, with the majority of those either losing their homes or facing a foreclosure sale, a national foreclosure tracking firm says. Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac says that during the second quarter, 5,626 properties were targeted by some foreclosure-related action. Such actions range from an initial default notice to outright repossession by a lender. That’s up 15.2% from the second quarter of 2010. Most of the latest notices represented the end of the line for delinquent homeowners. During the second quarter, 1,952 properties were repossessed, and repossession sales were scheduled for another 3,127. Louisiana ranked 26th in the RealtyTrac count among the states and the District of Columbia in foreclosure-related actions during the second quarter. During the first half of 2011, RealtyTrac says, 9,922 properties in Louisiana were targeted for some sort of foreclosure action, affecting one in every 198 housing units. That’s up 22% from the first half of 2010. Louisiana was ranked 30th for the first half of the year.
Plans are to put site in commercial use: An undeveloped 14-acre tract of land on Highland Road has been sold for $2.4 million to a local construction company. Deumite Construction bought the land, near Healing Place Church. Scott Deumite says the plan is to develop the property, which is zoned rural, for commercial use. “What we do with it really depends on what the buyer and the market want,” he says. Deumite says the fact that the property is easily accessible by Interstate 10, Airline Highway and even Interstate 12 made it appealing.
