‘Real Estate Weekly’: Perkins Road office on hold

A “For Sale” sign has remained in the empty lot on the corner of Perkins Road and Kenilworth Parkway, despite the property’s having sold last summer for more than $1.4 million. Ty Gose of NAI/Latter & Blum Commercial Real Estate, who worked for about five years to close the deal, says the buyer is a land speculator who wants to keep the 2.9-acre lot on the market in case any potential attractive offer comes along. But the buyer, whom Real Estate Weekly columnist Tom Cook revealed to be Cobalt Realty LLC, represented by Dr. André Bruni, realizes such an offer might not come until the Kenilworth Parkway extension is built on the east side of Perkins Road, Gose says. The extension would tie into the Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center campus off Essen Lane. No one knows when, or if, it will be built, though it is part of the city-parish’s new master plan, FuturEBR. A July 2012 Business Report story notes that the Kenilworth extension is not part of the Green Light Plan and—like about 40 other proposed roads in FuturEBR—is currently not funded. Meanwhile, Gose says, Cobalt Realty is anxious to get permitted to connect a driveway with the Kenilworth/Perkins traffic light; the Department of Public Works denied such a permit for another potential group of buyers in the past. Such a permit, Gose says, would spur the property owner to build up to 18,000 square feet of office space. —Adam Pearson Read the rest of the new Real Estate Weekly e-newsletter here.